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  • Eclipse and NetBeans replacing embedded IDEs (part 2 and part 3)

    - by Geertjan
    After part 1, in Embedded Insights, the series Eclipse and NetBeans replacing embedded IDEs by principal analyst Robert Cravotta continues below. Many embedded tool developers are choosing to migrate their embedded development toolset to an open source IDE platform for a number of reasons. Maintaining an up-to-date IDE with the latest ideas, innovations, and features requires continuous effort from the tool development team. In contrast to maintaining a proprietary IDE, adopting an open source IDE platform enables the tool developers to leverage the ideas and effort of the community and take advantage of advances in IDE features much sooner and without incurring the full risk of experimenting with new features in their own toolsets. Both the Eclipse and NetBeans platforms deliver regular releases that enable tool developers to more easily take advantage of the newest features in the platform architecture.  Read more of part 2 here, in an article published Thursday, May 17th, 2012. Both the NetBeans and Eclipse projects began as development environments and both evolved into platforms that support a wider array of software products. Both platforms have been actively supported and evolving open source projects that have competed and coexisted together for the past decade and this has led to a level a parity between the two platforms. From the perspective of a tool developer, applications are built the same way on either platform – the difference is in the specific terminology and tools. Read more of part 3 here, in an article published Tuesday, June 12th, 2012. And, as a bonus in this blog entry, here's how to get started creating an IDE on the NetBeans Platform:  http://netbeans.dzone.com/how-to-create-commercial-quality-ide

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  • jQuery Validation plugin: prompt for override

    - by Sam Carleton
    I have a jQuery form that has validation of a sort. It is a data entry screen with two 'recommend ranges', one is 36-84, the other 50-300. The business rules call for the values to be either blank or greater than zero, but to prompt for confirmation if the values are outside of the range listed above. I have seen some other threads that talk about setting the class="cancel" on the submit button. From what I can tell, this will simply disable the validation. I need to prompt for a "do you want to continue, yes or no?" and if no stop the submit, if yes, continue. Below is an example from the book Pro jQuery. By default the top row needs to be between 10 and 20 to submit. How would you change it so that it prompts you and if you say Yes it submits, no prevents the submit: <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <title>Example</title> <script src="jquery-1.7.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="jquery.tmpl.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="jquery.validate.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <style type="text/css"> h1 { min-width: 70px; border: thick double black; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center; font-size: x-large; padding: .5em; color: darkgreen; background-image: url("border.png"); background-size: contain; margin-top: 0; } .dtable {display: table;} .drow {display: table-row;} .dcell {display: table-cell; padding: 10px;} .dcell > * {vertical-align: middle} input {width: 2em; text-align: right; border: thin solid black; padding: 2px;} label {width: 5em; padding-left: .5em; display: inline-block;} #buttonDiv {text-align: center;} #oblock {display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; min-width: 700px; } div.errorMsg {color: red} .invalidElem {border: medium solid red} </style> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { var data = [ { name: "Astor", product: "astor", stocklevel: "10", price: "2.99"}, { name: "Daffodil", product: "daffodil", stocklevel: "12", price: "1.99"}, { name: "Rose", product: "rose", stocklevel: "2", price: "4.99"}, { name: "Peony", product: "peony", stocklevel: "0", price: "1.50"}, { name: "Primula", product: "primula", stocklevel: "1", price: "3.12"}, { name: "Snowdrop", product: "snowdrop", stocklevel: "15", price: "0.99"}, ]; var templResult = $('#flowerTmpl').tmpl(data); templResult.slice(0, 3).appendTo('#row1'); templResult.slice(3).appendTo("#row2"); $('form').validate({ highlight: function(element, errorClass) { $(element).add($(element).parent()).addClass("invalidElem"); }, unhighlight: function(element, errorClass) { $(element).add($(element).parent()).removeClass("invalidElem"); }, errorElement: "div", errorClass: "errorMsg" }); $.validator.addClassRules({ flowerValidation: { required: true, min: 0, max: 100, digits: true, } }) $('#row1 input').each(function(index, elem) { $(elem).rules("add", { min: 10, max: 20 }) }); $('input').addClass("flowerValidation").change(function(e) { $('form').validate().element($(e.target)); }); }); </script> <script id="flowerTmpl" type="text/x-jquery-tmpl"> <div class="dcell"> <img src="${product}.png"/> <label for="${product}">${name}: </label> <input name="${product}" value="0" required /> </div> </script> </head> <body> <h1>Jacqui's Flower Shop</h1> <form method="post" action="http://node.jacquisflowershop.com/order"> <div id="oblock"> <div class="dtable"> <div id="row1" class="drow"> </div> <div id="row2"class="drow"> </div> </div> </div> <div id="buttonDiv"><button type="submit">Place Order</button></div> </form> </body> </html>

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  • CSS content overflowing containing div

    - by kaese
    Hi, Currently have a problem with some DIVs overlapping their containing DIVs. See image below (the 3 products at the bottom): All the body content of the page is held within the #content DIV: div#content { width: 960px; float: left; background-image: url("../img/contentBg.png"); background-repeat: repeat; margin-top: 10px; line-height: 1.8em; border-top: 8px solid #5E88A2; padding: 10px 15px 10px 15px; } And here is the CSS for the product boxes within the #content div: .upper { text-transform: uppercase; } .center { text-align: center; } div#products { float: left; width: 100%; margin-bottom: 25px; } div.productContainer { float: left; width: 265px; font-size: 1em; margin-left: 50px; height: 200px; padding-top: 25px; text-align: right; } div.product { float: left; width: 200px; } div.product p { } div.product a { display: block; } div.product img { float: left; } div.product img:hover { opacity: 0.8; filter: alpha(opacity = 80); } div.transparent { opacity: 0.8; filter: alpha(opacity = 80); } And here is the HTML for the boxes: <div class="productContainer"> <div class="product"> <h2 class="upper center">A2 Print</h2> <a href='../edit/?productId=5&amp;align=v' class='upper'> <img src="../../wflow/tmp/133703b808c91b8ec7e7c7cdf19320b7A2-Print.png" alt="Representation of image printed at A2 Print through MyPersonalPoster." /></a> <p class="upper">16.5 inches x 23.4 inches<br /><strong>&pound;15.99</strong></p> <p class="upper smaller"><em><span><span class="yes">Yes</span> - your picture quality is high enough for this size</span> </em></p> <p><a href='../edit/?productId=5&amp;align=v' class='upper'><span>Select</span></a></p> </div> </div> <div class="productContainer"> <div class="product transparent"> <h2 class="upper center">A1 Print</h2> <a href='../edit/?productId=11&amp;align=v' class='upper'> <img src="../../wflow/tmp/133703b808c91b8ec7e7c7cdf19320b7A1-Print.png" alt="Representation of image printed at A1 Print through MyPersonalPoster." /></a> <p class="upper">23.4 inches x 33.1 inches<br /><strong>&pound;19.99</strong></p> <p class="upper smaller"><em><span><span class="no">Warning</span> - your picture quality may not be sufficient for this size</span> </em></p> <p><a href='../edit/?productId=11&amp;align=v' class='upper'><span>Select</span></a></p> </div> </div> <div class="productContainer"> <div class="product transparent"> <h2 class="upper center">Poster Print (60cm x 80cm)</h2> <a href='../edit/?productId=12&amp;align=v' class='upper'> <img src="../../wflow/tmp/133703b808c91b8ec7e7c7cdf19320b7Poster-Print-(60cm-x-80cm).png" alt="Representation of image printed at Poster Print (60cm x 80cm) through MyPersonalPoster." /></a> <p class="upper">23.6 inches x 31.5 inches<br /><strong>&pound;13.95</strong></p> <p class="upper smaller"><em><span><span class="no">Warning</span> - your picture quality may not be sufficient for this size</span> </em></p> <p><a href='../edit/?productId=12&amp;align=v' class='upper'><span>Select</span></a></p> </div> </div> Any idea what could be causing these DIVs to overlap? What I'd like is for all the boxes to fit within the #container div as expected. It's driving me crazy! Cheers

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  • How to obtain listview information without refreshing the page?

    - by user1808098
    I am currently developing an Android Application for my Final Year Project. But to be honest I do not have any basic knowledges and everything started from scratch and referring to online tutorials a lot. Here is my question, I was trying to retrieve data from listview activity. There are two listview in my page using button. I was able to display the first listview but when it get data for the second listview, the data for first listview is disappeared because the page is refreshed, vice versa. What code should I modified to get both the data in the page? (Database not implemented yet) Please help, thanks a lot. Below are my codings. Codings for XML. <!-- Location --> <TextView android:id="@+id/TextViewLocation" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:layout_marginBottom="10dip" android:text="Location Information" android:gravity="center" android:textSize="15dip" android:textColor="#025f7c"/> <!-- Condition Label --> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textColor="#372c24" android:text="Traffic Condition"/> <Button android:id="@+id/inputListView" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:layout_marginBottom="10dip" android:text="choose one..."/> <!-- Comment Label --> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textColor="#372c24" android:text="What's Happening?"/> <Button android:id="@+id/inputListView2" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:layout_marginBottom="10dip" android:text="choose one..."/> <!-- Suggestion Label --> <TextView android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:textColor="#372c24" android:text="Comments / Suggestion"/> <EditText android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="80dp" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:layout_marginBottom="10dip" android:singleLine="true"/> <!-- Image button --> <Button android:id="@+id/btnImage" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:text="Upload Image"/> <!-- Report button --> <Button android:id="@+id/btnReportCheckin" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:text="Report"/> <!-- Link to Logout --> <TextView android:id="@+id/linkLogout" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:layout_marginTop="5dip" android:layout_marginBottom="40dip" android:text="Log Out" android:gravity="center" android:textSize="20dip" android:textColor="#025f7c"/> </LinearLayout> <!-- Check or Report Form Ends --> Codings for Activity Class public class CheckinActivity extends Activity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); // Set View to checkin.xml setContentView(R.layout.checkin); /* TextView LocationView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.TextViewLocation); Intent h = getIntent(); // getting attached intent data String address = h.getStringExtra("address"); // displaying selected product name LocationView.setText(address); */ Button ListViewScreen = (Button) findViewById(R.id.inputListView); //Listening to Button ListViewScreen.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { //Switching to ListView Screen Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), ListViewActivity.class); startActivity(i); } } ); Button SelectedView = (Button) findViewById(R.id.inputListView); Intent i = getIntent(); // getting attached intent data String product = i.getStringExtra("product"); // displaying selected product name SelectedView.setText(product); Button ListView2Screen = (Button) findViewById(R.id.inputListView2); //Listening to Button ListView2Screen.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View v) { //Switching to ListView Screen Intent j = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), ListView2Activity.class); startActivity(j); } } ); Button SelectedView2 = (Button) findViewById(R.id.inputListView2); Intent j = getIntent(); // getting attached intent data String product2 = j.getStringExtra("product2"); // displaying selected product name SelectedView2.setText(product2); TextView Logout = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.linkLogout); // Listening to Log out Logout.setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() { public void onClick(View arg0) { // Closing menu screen // Switching to Login Screen/closing register screen finish(); } }); } } Coding for listview class public class ListViewActivity extends ListActivity { @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); // storing string resources into Array String[] traffic_condition = getResources().getStringArray(R.array.traffic_condition); // Binding resources Array to ListAdapter this.setListAdapter(new ArrayAdapter<String>(this, R.layout.listitem, R.id.listViewLayout, traffic_condition)); ListView lv = getListView(); // listening to single list item on click lv.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() { public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) { // selected item String product = ((TextView) view).getText().toString(); // Launching new Activity on selecting single List Item Intent i = new Intent(getApplicationContext(), CheckinActivity.class); // sending data to new activity i.putExtra("product", product); startActivity(i); } }); } } Hope I made myself clear, I can provide a screen shot of my apps if it is required, thanks!

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  • Nested property binding

    - by EtherealMonkey
    Recently, I have been trying to wrap my mind around the BindingList<T> and INotifyPropertChanged. More specifically - How do I make a collection of objects (having objects as properties) which will allow me to subscribe to events throughout the tree? To that end, I have examined the code offered as examples by others. One such project that I downloaded was Nested Property Binding - CodeProject by "seesharper". Now, the article explains the implementation, but there was a question by "Someone@AnotherWorld" about "INotifyPropertyChanged in nested objects". His question was: Hi, nice stuff! But after a couple of time using your solution I realize the ObjectBindingSource ignores the PropertyChanged event of nested objects. E.g. I've got a class 'Foo' with two properties named 'Name' and 'Bar'. 'Name' is a string an 'Bar' reference an instance of class 'Bar', which has a 'Name' property of type string too and both classes implements INotifyPropertyChanged. With your binding source reading and writing with both properties ('Name' and 'Bar_Name') works fine but the PropertyChanged event works only for the 'Name' property, because the binding source listen only for events of 'Foo'. One workaround is to retrigger the PropertyChanged event in the appropriate class (here 'Foo'). What's very unclean! The other approach would be to extend ObjectBindingSource so that all owner of nested property which implements INotifyPropertyChanged get used for receive changes, but how? Thanks! I had asked about BindingList<T> yesterday and received a good answer from Aaronaught. In my question, I had a similar point as "Someone@AnotherWorld": if Keywords were to implement INotifyPropertyChanged, would changes be accessible to the BindingList through the ScannedImage object? To which Aaronaught's response was: No, they will not. BindingList only looks at the specific object in the list, it has no ability to scan all dependencies and monitor everything in the graph (nor would that always be a good idea, if it were possible). I understand Aaronaught's comment regarding this behavior not necessarily being a good idea. Additionally, his suggestion to have my bound object "relay" events on behalf of it's member objects works fine and is perfectly acceptable. For me, "re-triggering" the PropertyChanged event does not seem so unclean as "Someone@AnotherWorld" laments. I do understand why he protests - in the interest of loosely coupled objects. However, I believe that coupling between objects that are part of a composition is logical and not so undesirable as this may be in other scenarios. (I am a newb, so I could be waaayyy off base.) Anyway, in the interest of exploring an answer to the question by "Someone@AnotherWorld", I altered the MainForm.cs file of the example project from Nested Property Binding - CodeProject by "seesharper" to the following: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.ComponentModel; using System.Core.ComponentModel; using System.Windows.Forms; namespace ObjectBindingSourceDemo { public partial class MainForm : Form { private readonly List<Customer> _customers = new List<Customer>(); private readonly List<Product> _products = new List<Product>(); private List<Order> orders; public MainForm() { InitializeComponent(); dataGridView1.AutoGenerateColumns = false; dataGridView2.AutoGenerateColumns = false; CreateData(); } private void CreateData() { _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Jane Wilson", new Address("98104", "6657 Sand Pointe Lane", "Seattle", "USA"))); _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Bill Smith", new Address("94109", "5725 Glaze Drive", "San Francisco", "USA"))); _customers.Add( new Customer(1, "Samantha Brown", null)); _products.Add(new Product(1, "Keyboard", 49.99)); _products.Add(new Product(2, "Mouse", 10.99)); _products.Add(new Product(3, "PC", 599.99)); _products.Add(new Product(4, "Monitor", 299.99)); _products.Add(new Product(5, "LapTop", 799.99)); _products.Add(new Product(6, "Harddisc", 89.99)); customerBindingSource.DataSource = _customers; productBindingSource.DataSource = _products; orders = new List<Order>(); orders.Add(new Order(1, DateTime.Now, _customers[0])); orders.Add(new Order(2, DateTime.Now, _customers[1])); orders.Add(new Order(3, DateTime.Now, _customers[2])); #region Added by me OrderLine orderLine1 = new OrderLine(_products[0], 1); OrderLine orderLine2 = new OrderLine(_products[1], 3); orderLine1.PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler(OrderLineChanged); orderLine2.PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler(OrderLineChanged); orders[0].OrderLines.Add(orderLine1); orders[0].OrderLines.Add(orderLine2); #endregion // Removed by me in lieu of region above. //orders[0].OrderLines.Add(new OrderLine(_products[0], 1)); //orders[0].OrderLines.Add(new OrderLine(_products[1], 3)); ordersBindingSource.DataSource = orders; } #region Added by me // Have to wait until the form is Shown to wire up the events // for orderDetailsBindingSource. Otherwise, they are triggered // during MainForm().InitializeComponent(). private void MainForm_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e) { orderDetailsBindingSource.AddingNew += new AddingNewEventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_AddingNew); orderDetailsBindingSource.CurrentItemChanged += new EventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_CurrentItemChanged); orderDetailsBindingSource.ListChanged += new ListChangedEventHandler(orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged); } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_AddingNew( object sender, AddingNewEventArgs e) { } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_CurrentItemChanged( object sender, EventArgs e) { } private void orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged( object sender, ListChangedEventArgs e) { ObjectBindingSource bindingSource = (ObjectBindingSource)sender; if (!(bindingSource.Current == null)) { // Unsure if GetType().ToString() is required b/c ToString() // *seems* // to return the same value. if (bindingSource.Current.GetType().ToString() == "ObjectBindingSourceDemo.OrderLine") { if (e.ListChangedType == ListChangedType.ItemAdded) { // I wish that I knew of a way to determine // if the 'PropertyChanged' delegate assignment is null. // I don't like the current test, but it seems to work. if (orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].Product == null) { orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler( OrderLineChanged); } } if (e.ListChangedType == ListChangedType.ItemDeleted) { // Will throw exception when leaving // an OrderLine row with unitialized properties. // // I presume this is because the item // has already been 'disposed' of at this point. // *but* // Will it be actually be released from memory // if the delegate assignment for PropertyChanged // was never removed??? if (orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].Product != null) { orders[ ordersBindingSource.Position].OrderLines[ e.NewIndex].PropertyChanged -= new PropertyChangedEventHandler( OrderLineChanged); } } } } } private void OrderLineChanged(object sender, PropertyChangedEventArgs e) { MessageBox.Show(e.PropertyName, "Property Changed:"); } #endregion } } In the method private void orderDetailsBindSrc_ListChanged(object sender, ListChangedEventArgs e) I am able to hook up the PropertyChangedEventHandler to the OrderLine object as it is being created. However, I cannot seem to find a way to unhook the PropertyChangedEventHandler from the OrderLine object before it is being removed from the orders[i].OrderLines list. So, my questions are: Am I simply trying to do something that is very, very wrong here? Will the OrderLines object that I add the delegate assignments to ever be released from memory if the assignment is not removed? Is there a "sane" method of achieving this scenario? Also, note that this question is not specifically related to my prior. I have actually solved the issue which had prompted me to inquire before. However, I have reached a point with this particular topic of discovery where my curiosity has exceeded my patience - hopefully someone here can shed some light on this?

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  • g++ SSE intrinsics dilemma - value from intrinsic "saturates"

    - by Sriram
    Hi, I wrote a simple program to implement SSE intrinsics for computing the inner product of two large (100000 or more elements) vectors. The program compares the execution time for both, inner product computed the conventional way and using intrinsics. Everything works out fine, until I insert (just for the fun of it) an inner loop before the statement that computes the inner product. Before I go further, here is the code: //this is a sample Intrinsics program to compute inner product of two vectors and compare Intrinsics with traditional method of doing things. #include <iostream> #include <iomanip> #include <xmmintrin.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <time.h> #include <stdlib.h> using namespace std; typedef float v4sf __attribute__ ((vector_size(16))); double innerProduct(float* arr1, int len1, float* arr2, int len2) { //assume len1 = len2. float result = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < len1; i++) { for(int j = 0; j < len1; j++) { result += (arr1[i] * arr2[i]); } } //float y = 1.23e+09; //cout << "y = " << y << endl; return result; } double sse_v4sf_innerProduct(float* arr1, int len1, float* arr2, int len2) { //assume that len1 = len2. if(len1 != len2) { cout << "Lengths not equal." << endl; exit(1); } /*steps: * 1. load a long-type (4 float) into a v4sf type data from both arrays. * 2. multiply the two. * 3. multiply the same and store result. * 4. add this to previous results. */ v4sf arr1Data, arr2Data, prevSums, multVal, xyz; //__builtin_ia32_xorps(prevSums, prevSums); //making it equal zero. //can explicitly load 0 into prevSums using loadps or storeps (Check). float temp[4] = {0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0}; prevSums = __builtin_ia32_loadups(temp); float result = 0.0; for(int i = 0; i < (len1 - 3); i += 4) { for(int j = 0; j < len1; j++) { arr1Data = __builtin_ia32_loadups(&arr1[i]); arr2Data = __builtin_ia32_loadups(&arr2[i]); //store the contents of two arrays. multVal = __builtin_ia32_mulps(arr1Data, arr2Data); //multiply. xyz = __builtin_ia32_addps(multVal, prevSums); prevSums = xyz; } } //prevSums will hold the sums of 4 32-bit floating point values taken at a time. Individual entries in prevSums also need to be added. __builtin_ia32_storeups(temp, prevSums); //store prevSums into temp. cout << "Values of temp:" << endl; for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++) cout << temp[i] << endl; result += temp[0] + temp[1] + temp[2] + temp[3]; return result; } int main() { clock_t begin, end; int length = 100000; float *arr1, *arr2; double result_Conventional, result_Intrinsic; // printStats("Allocating memory."); arr1 = new float[length]; arr2 = new float[length]; // printStats("End allocation."); srand(time(NULL)); //init random seed. // printStats("Initializing array1 and array2"); begin = clock(); for(int i = 0; i < length; i++) { // for(int j = 0; j < length; j++) { // arr1[i] = rand() % 10 + 1; arr1[i] = 2.5; // arr2[i] = rand() % 10 - 1; arr2[i] = 2.5; // } } end = clock(); cout << "Time to initialize array1 and array2 = " << ((double) (end - begin)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << endl; // printStats("Finished initialization."); // printStats("Begin inner product conventionally."); begin = clock(); result_Conventional = innerProduct(arr1, length, arr2, length); end = clock(); cout << "Time to compute inner product conventionally = " << ((double) (end - begin)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << endl; // printStats("End inner product conventionally."); // printStats("Begin inner product using Intrinsics."); begin = clock(); result_Intrinsic = sse_v4sf_innerProduct(arr1, length, arr2, length); end = clock(); cout << "Time to compute inner product with intrinsics = " << ((double) (end - begin)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC << endl; //printStats("End inner product using Intrinsics."); cout << "Results: " << endl; cout << " result_Conventional = " << result_Conventional << endl; cout << " result_Intrinsics = " << result_Intrinsic << endl; return 0; } I use the following g++ invocation to build this: g++ -W -Wall -O2 -pedantic -march=i386 -msse intrinsics_SSE_innerProduct.C -o innerProduct Each of the loops above, in both the functions, runs a total of N^2 times. However, given that arr1 and arr2 (the two floating point vectors) are loaded with a value 2.5, the length of the array is 100,000, the result in both cases should be 6.25e+10. The results I get are: Results: result_Conventional = 6.25e+10 result_Intrinsics = 5.36871e+08 This is not all. It seems that the value returned from the function that uses intrinsics "saturates" at the value above. I tried putting other values for the elements of the array and different sizes too. But it seems that any value above 1.0 for the array contents and any size above 1000 meets with the same value we see above. Initially, I thought it might be because all operations within SSE are in floating point, but floating point should be able to store a number that is of the order of e+08. I am trying to see where I could be going wrong but cannot seem to figure it out. I am using g++ version: g++ (GCC) 4.4.1 20090725 (Red Hat 4.4.1-2). Any help on this is most welcome. Thanks, Sriram.

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  • How To Activate Your Free Office 2007 to 2010 Tech Guarantee Upgrade

    - by Matthew Guay
    Have you purchased Office 2007 since March 5th, 2010?  If so, here’s how you can activate and download your free upgrade to Office 2010! Microsoft Office 2010 has just been released, and today you can purchase upgrades from most retail stores or directly from Microsoft via download.  But if you’ve purchased a new copy of Office 2007 or a new computer that came with Office 2007 since March 5th, 2010, then you’re entitled to an absolutely free upgrade to Office 2010.  You’ll need enter information about your Office 2007 and then download the upgrade, so we’ll step you through the process. Getting Started First, if you’ve recently purchased Office 2007 but haven’t installed it, you’ll need to go ahead and install it before you can get your free Office 2010 upgrade.  Install it as normal.   Once Office 2007 is installed, run any of the Office programs.  You’ll be prompted to activate Office.  Make sure you’re connected to the internet, and then click Next to activate. Get your Free Upgrade to Office 2010 Now you’re ready to download your upgrade to Office 2010.  Head to the Office Tech Guarantee site (link below), and click Upgrade now. You’ll need to enter some information about your Office 2007.  Check that you purchased your copy of Office 2007 after March 5th, select your computer manufacturer, and check that you agree to the terms. Now you’re going to need the Product ID number from Office 2007.  To find this, open Word or any other Office 2007 application.  Click the Office Orb, and select Options on the bottom. Select the Resources button on the left, and then click About. Near the bottom of this dialog, you’ll see your Product ID.  This should be a number like: 12345-123-1234567-12345   Go back to the Office Tech Guarantee signup page in your browser, and enter this Product ID.  Select the language of your edition of Office 2007, enter the verification code, and then click Submit. It may take a few moments to validate your Product ID. When it is finished, you’ll be taken to an order page that shows the edition of Office 2010 you’re eligible to receive.  The upgrade download is free, but if you’d like to purchase a backup DVD of Office 2010, you can add it to your order for $13.99.  Otherwise, simply click Continue to accept. Do note that the edition of Office 2010 you receive may be different that the edition of Office 2007 you purchased, as the number of editions has been streamlined in the Office 2010 release.  Here’s a chart you can check to see what edition you’ll receive.  Note that you’ll still be allowed to install Office on the same number of computers; for example, Office 2007 Home and Student allows you to install it on up to 3 computers in the same house, and your Office 2010 upgrade will allow the same. Office 2007 Edition Office 2010 Upgrade You’ll Receive Office 2007 Home and Student Office Home and Student 2010 Office Basic 2007Office Standard 2007 Office Home and Business 2010 Office Small Business 2007Office Professional 2007Office Ultimate 2007 Office Professional 2010 Office Professional 2007 AcademicOffice Ultimate 2007 Academic Office Professional Academic 2010 Sign in with your Windows Live ID, or create a new one if you don’t already have one. Enter your name, select your country, and click Create My Account.  Note that Office will send Office 2010 tips to your email address; if you don’t wish to receive them, you can unsubscribe from the emails later.   Finally, you’re ready to download Office 2010!  Click the Download Now link to start downloading Office 2010.  Your Product Key will appear directly above the Download link, so you can copy it and then paste it in the installer when your download is finished.  You will additionally receive an email with the download links and product key, so if your download fails you can always restart it from that link. If your edition of Office 2007 included the Office Business Contact Manager, you will be able to download it from the second Download link.  And, of course, even if you didn’t order a backup DVD, you can always burn the installers to a DVD for a backup.   Install Office 2010 Once you’re finished downloading Office 2010, run the installer to get it installed on your computer.  Enter your Product Key from the Tech Guarantee website as above, and click Continue. Accept the license agreement, and then click Upgrade to upgrade to the latest version of Office.   The installer will remove all of your Office 2007 applications, and then install their 2010 counterparts.  If you wish to keep some of your Office 2007 applications instead, click Customize and then select to either keep all previous versions or simply keep specific applications. By default, Office 2010 will try to activate online automatically.  If it doesn’t activate during the install, you’ll need to activate it when you first run any of the Office 2010 apps.   Conclusion The Tech Guarantee makes it easy to get the latest version of Office if you recently purchased Office 2007.  The Tech Guarantee program is open through the end of September, so make sure to grab your upgrade during this time.  Actually, if you find a great deal on Office 2007 from a major retailer between now and then, you could also take advantage of this program to get Office 2010 cheaper. And if you need help getting started with Office 2010, check out our articles that can help you get situated in your new version of Office! Link Activate and Download Your free Office 2010 Tech Guarantee Upgrade Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove Office 2010 Beta and Reinstall Office 2007Upgrade Office 2003 to 2010 on XP or Run them Side by SideCenter Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010Change the Default Color Scheme in Office 2010Show Two Time Zones in Your Outlook 2007 Calendar TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Windows Media Player Plus! – Cool WMP Enhancer Get Your Team’s World Cup Schedule In Google Calendar Backup Drivers With Driver Magician TubeSort: YouTube Playlist Organizer XPS file format & XPS Viewer Explained Microsoft Office Web Apps Guide

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  • Tips on installing Visual Studio 2010 SP1

    - by Jon Galloway
    Visual Studio SP1 went up on MSDN downloads (here) on March 8, and will be released publicly on March 10 here. Release announcements: Soma: Visual Studio 2010 enhancements Jason Zander: Announcing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 I started on this post with tips on installing VS2010 SP1 when I realized I’ve been writing these up for Visual Studio and .NET framework SP releases for a while (e.g. VS2008 / .NET 3.5 SP1 post, VS2005 SP1 post). Looking back the years of Visual Studio SP installs (and remembering when we’d get up to SP6 for a Visual Studio release), I’m happy to see that it just keeps getting easier. Service Packs are a lot less finicky about requiring beta software to be uninstalled, install more quickly, and are just generally a lot less scary. If I can’t have a jetpack, at least my future provided me faster, easier service packs. Disclaimer: These tips are just general things I've picked up over the years. I don't have any inside knowledge here. If you see anything wrong, be sure to let me know in the comments. You may want to check the readme file before installing - it's short, and it's in that new-fangled HTML format. On with the tips! Before starting, uninstall Visual Studio features you don't use Visual Studio service packs (and other Microsoft service packs as well) install patches for the specific features you’ve got installed. This is a big reason to always do a custom install when you first install Visual Studio, but it’s not difficult to update your existing installation. Here’s the quick way to do that: Tap the windows key and type “add or remove programs” and press enter (or click on the “Add or remove programs” link if you must).   Type “Visual Studio 2010” in the search box in the upper right corner, click on the Visual Studio program (the one with the VS infinity looking logo) and click on Uninstall/Change. Click on Add or Remove Features The next part’s up to you – what features do you actually use? I’ve been doing primarily ASP.NET MVC development in C# lately, so I selected Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. Remember that you can install features later if needed, and can also install the express versions if you want. Selecting everything just because it’s there - or you paid for it – means that you install updates for everything, every time. When you’ve made your changes, click on the Update button to uninstall unused features. Shut down all instances of Visual Studio It probably goes without saying that you should close a program down before installing it, partly to avoid the file-in-use-reboot-after-install horror. Additional "hunch / works on my machine" quality tip: On one computer I saw a note in the setup log about Visual Studio a prompt for user input to close Visual Studio, although I never saw the prompt. Just to  be sure, I'd personally open up Task Manager and kill any devenv.exe processes I saw running, as it couldn't hurt. Use the web installer I use the Web Installers whenever possible. There’s no point in downloading the DVD unless you’re doing multiple installs or won’t have internet access. The DVD IS is 1.5GB, since it needs to be able to service every possible supported installation option on both x86 and x64. The web installer is 776 KB (smaller than calc.exe), so you can start the installation right away. Like other web installers, the real benefit is that it only installs the updates you need (hence the reason for step 1 – uninstalling unused components). Instead of 1.5GB, my download was roughly 530MB. If you’re installing from MSDN (this link takes you right to the Visual Studio installs), select the first one on the list: The first step in the installation process is to analyze the machine configuration and tell you what needs to be installed. Since I've trimmed down my features, that's a pretty short list. The time's not far off where I may not install SQL Server on my dev machines, just using SQL Server Compact - that would shorten the list further. When I hit next, you can see that the download size has shrunk considerably. When I start the install, note that the installation begins while other components are downloading - another benefit of the web install. On my mid-range desktop machine, the install took 25 minutes. What if it takes longer? According to Heath Stewart (Visual Studio installer guru), average SP1 installs take roughly 45 minutes. An installation which takes hours to complete may be a sign of a problem: see his post Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installing for over 2 hours could be a sign of a problem. Why so long? Yes, even 25 minutes is a while. Heath's got another blog post explaining why the update can take longer than the initial install (see: A patch may take as long or longer to install than the target product) which explains all the additional steps and complexities a patch needs to deal with, as well as some mitigation steps that deployment authors can take to mitigate the impact. Other things to know about Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Installs over Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta That's nice. Previous Visual Studio versions did a number of annoying things when you installed SP's over beta's - fail with weird errors, get part way through and tell you needed to cancel and uninstall first, etc. I've installed this on two machines that had random beta stuff installed without tears. That Readme file you didn't read I mentioned the readme file earlier (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=210711 ). Some interesting things I picked up in there: 2.1.3. Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 installation may fail when a USB drive or other removeable drive is connected 2.1.4. Visual Studio must be restarted after Visual Studio 2010 SP1 tooling for SQL Server Compact (Compact) 4.0 is installed 2.2.1. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled to restore certain components 2.2.2. If Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is uninstalled, Visual Studio 2010 must be reinstalled before SP1 can be installed again 2.4.3.1. Async CTP If you installed the pre-SP1 version of Async CTP but did not uninstall it before you installed Visual Studio 2010 SP1, then your computer will be in a state in which the version of the C# compiler in the .NET Framework does not match the C# compiler in Visual Studio. To resolve this issue: After you install Visual Studio 2010 SP1, reinstall the SP1 version of the Async CTP from here. Hardware acceleration for Visual Studio is disabled on Windows XP Visual Studio 2010 SP1 disables hardware acceleration when running on Windows XP (only on XP). You can turn it back on in the Visual Studio options, under Environment / General, as shown below. See Jason Zander's post titled Performance Troubleshooting Article and VS2010 SP1 Change.

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  • Using Unity – Part 2

    - by nmarun
    In the first part of this series, we created a simple project and learned how to implement IoC pattern using Unity. In this one, I’ll show how you can instantiate other types that implement our IProduct interface. One place where this one would want to use this feature is to create mock types for testing purposes. Alright, let’s dig in. I added another class – Product2.cs  to the ProductModel project. 1: public class Product2 : IProduct 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set;} 4: public Category Category { get; set; } 5: public DateTime MfgDate { get;set; } 6:  7: public Product2() 8: { 9: Name = "Canon Digital Rebel XTi"; 10: Category = new Category {Name = "Electronics", SubCategoryName = "Digital Cameras"}; 11: MfgDate = DateTime.Now; 12: } 13:  14: public string WriteProductDetails() 15: { 16: return string.Format("Name: {0}<br/>Category: {1}<br/>Mfg Date: {2}", 17: Name, Category, MfgDate.ToShortDateString()); 18: } 19: } Highlights of this class are that it implements IProduct interface and it has some different properties than the Product class. The Category class looks like below: 1: public class Category 2: { 3: public string Name { get; set; } 4: public string SubCategoryName { get; set; } 5:  6: public override string ToString() 7: { 8: return string.Format("{0} - {1}", Name, SubCategoryName); 9: } 10: } We’ll go to our web.config file to add the configuration information about this new class – Product2 that we created. Let’s first add a typeAlias element. 1: <typeAlias alias="Product2" type="ProductModel.Product2, ProductModel"/> That’s all that is needed for us to get an instance of Product2 in our application. I have a new button added to the .aspx page and the click event of this button is where all the magic happens: 1: private IUnityContainer unityContainer; 2: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) 3: { 4: unityContainer = Application["UnityContainer"] as IUnityContainer; 5: 6: if (unityContainer == null) 7: { 8: productDetailsLabel.Text = "ERROR: Unity Container not populated in Global.asax.<p />"; 9: } 10: else 11: { 12: if (!IsPostBack) 13: { 14: IProduct productInstance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 15: productDetailsLabel.Text = productInstance.WriteProductDetails(); 16: } 17: } 18: } 19:  20: protected void Product2Button_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 21: { 22: unityContainer.RegisterType<IProduct, Product2>(); 23: IProduct product2Instance = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(); 24: productDetailsLabel.Text = product2Instance.WriteProductDetails(); 25: } The unityContainer instance is set in the Page_Load event. Line 22 in the click event of the Product2Button registers a type mapping in the container. In English, this means that when unityContainer tries to resolve for IProduct, it gets an instance of Product2. Once this code runs, following output is rendered: There’s another way of doing this. You can resolve an instance of the requested type with a name from the container. We’ll have to update the container element of our web.config file to include the following: 1: <container name="unityContainer"> 2: <types> 3: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product"/> 4: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product --> 5: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product" name="LegacyProduct" /> 6: <!-- Named mapping for IProduct to Product2 --> 7: <type type="IProduct" mapTo="Product2" name="NewProduct" /> 8: </types> 9: </container> I’ve added a Dropdownlist and a button to the design page: 1: <asp:DropDownList ID="ModelTypesList" runat="server"> 2: <asp:ListItem Text="Legacy Product" Value="LegacyProduct" /> 3: <asp:ListItem Text="New Product" Value="NewProduct" /> 4: </asp:DropDownList> 5: <br /> 6: <asp:Button ID="SelectedModelButton" Text="Get Selected Instance" runat="server" 7: onclick="SelectedModelButton_Click" /> 1: protected void SelectedModelButton_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 2: { 3: // get the selected value: LegacyProduct or NewProduct 4: string modelType = ModelTypesList.SelectedValue; 5: // pass the modelType to the Resolve method 6: IProduct customModel = unityContainer.Resolve<IProduct>(modelType); 7: productDetailsLabel.Text = customModel.WriteProductDetails(); 8: } Pretty straight forward right? The only thing to note here is that the values in the dropdownlist item need to match the name attribute of the type. Depending on what you select, you’ll get an instance of either the Product class or the Product2 class and the corresponding WriteProductDetails() method is called. Now you see, how either of these methods can be used to create mock objects your the test project. See the code here. I’ll continue to share more of Unity in the next blog.

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  • Can Microsoft Build Appliances?

    - by andrewbrust
    Billy Hollis, my Visual Studio Live! colleague and fellow Microsoft Regional Director said recently, and I am paraphrasing, that the computing world, especially on the consumer side, has shifted from one of building hardware and software that makes things possible to do, to building products and technologies that make things easy to do.  Billy crystalized things perfectly, as he often does. In this new world of “easy to do,” Apple has done very well and Microsoft has struggled.  In the old world, customers wanted a Swiss Army Knife, with the most gimmicks and gadgets possible.  In the new world, people want elegantly cutlery.  They may want cake cutters and utility knives too, but they don’t want one device that works for all three tasks.  People don’t want tools, they want utensils.  People don’t want machines.  They want appliances. Microsoft Appliances: They Do Exist Microsoft has built a few appliance-like devices.  I would say XBox 360 is an appliance,  It’s versatile, mind you, but it’s the kind of thing you plug in, turn on and use, as opposed to set-up, tune, and open up to upgrade the internals.  Windows Phone 7 is an appliance too.  It’s a true smartphone, unlike Windows Mobile which was a handheld computer with a radio stack.  Zune is an appliance too, and a nice one.  It hasn’t attained much traction in the market, but that’s probably because the seminal consumer computing appliance -- the iPod – got there so much more quickly. In the embedded world, Mediaroom, Microsoft’s set-top product for the cable industry (used by AT&T U-Verse and others) is an appliance.  So is Microsoft’s Sync technology, used in Ford automobiles.  Even on the enterprise side, Microsoft has an appliance: SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse Edition (PDW) combines Microsoft software with select OEMs’ server, networking and storage hardware.  You buy the appliance units from the OEMs, plug them in, connect them and go. I would even say that Bing is an appliance.  Not in the hardware sense, mind you.  But from the software perspective, it’s a single-purpose product that you visit or run, use and then move on.  You don’t have to install it (except the iOS and Android native apps where it’s pretty straightforward), you don’t have to customize it, you don’t have to program it.  Basically, you just use it. Microsoft Appliances that Should Exist But Microsoft builds a bunch of things that are not appliances.  Media Center is not an appliance, and it most certainly should be.  Instead, it’s an app that runs on Windows 7.  It runs full-screen and you can use this configuration to conceal the fact that Windows is under it, but eventually something will cause you to abandon that masquerade (like Patch Tuesday). The next version of Windows Home Server won’t, in my opinion, be an appliance either.  Now that the Drive Extender technology is gone, and users can’t just add and remove drives into and from a single storage pool, the product is much more like a IT server and less like an appliance-premised one.  Much has been written about this decision by Microsoft.  I’ll just sum it up in one word: pity. Microsoft doesn’t have anything remotely appliance-like in the tablet category, either.  Until it does, it likely won’t have much market share in that space either.  And of course, the bulk of Microsoft’s product catalog on the business side is geared to enterprise machines and not personal appliances. Appliance DNA: They Gotta Have It. The consumerization of IT is real, because businesspeople are consumers too.  They appreciate the fit and finish of appliances at home, and they increasingly feel entitled to have it at work too.  Secure and reliable push email in a smartphone is necessary, but it isn’t enough.  People want great apps and a pleasurable user experience too.  The full Microsoft Office product is needed at work, but a PC with a keyboard and mouse, or maybe a touch screen that uses a stylus (or requires really small fingers), to run Office isn’t enough either.  People want a flawless touch experience available for the times they want to read and take quick notes.  Until Microsoft realizes this fully and internalizes it, it will suffer defeats in the consumer market and even setbacks in the business market.  Think about how slow the Office upgrade cycle is…now imagine if the next version of Office had a first-class alternate touch UI and consider the possible acceleration in adoption rates. Can Microsoft make the appliance switch?  Can the appliance mentality become pervasive at the company?  Can Microsoft hasten its release cycles dramatically and shed the “some assembly required” paradigm upon which many of its products are based?  Let’s face it, the chances that Microsoft won’t make this transition are significant. But there are also encouraging signs, and they should not be ignored.  The appliances we have already discussed, especially Xbox, Zune and Windows Phone 7, are the most obvious in this regard.  The fact that SQL Server has an appliance SKU now is a more subtle but perhaps also more significant outcome, because that product sits so smack in the middle of Microsoft’s enterprise stack.  Bing is encouraging too, especially given its integrated travel, maps and augmented reality capabilities.  As Bing gains market share, Microsoft has tangible proof that it can transform and win, even when everyone outside the company, and many within it, would bet otherwise. That Great Big Appliance in the Sky Perhaps the most promising (and evolving) proof points toward the appliance mentality, though, are Microsoft’s cloud offerings -- Azure and BPOS/Office 365.  While the cloud does not represent a physical appliance (quite the opposite in fact) its ability to make acquisition, deployment and use of technology simple for the user is absolutely an embodiment of the appliance mentality and spirit.  Azure is primarily a platform as a service offering; it doesn’t just provide infrastructure.  SQL Azure does likewise for databases.  And Office 365 does likewise for SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. You don’t administer, tune and manage servers; instead, you create databases or site collections or mailboxes and start using them. Upgrades come automatically, and it seems like releases will come more frequently.  Fault tolerance and content distribution is just there.  No muss.  No fuss.  You use these services; you don’t have to set them up and think about them.  That’s how appliances work.  To me, these signs point out that Microsoft has the full capability of transforming itself.  But there’s a lot of work ahead.  Microsoft may say they’re “all in” on the cloud, but the majority of the company is still oriented around its old products and models.  There needs to be a wholesale cultural transformation in Redmond.  It can happen, but product management, program management, the field and executive ranks must unify in the effort. So must partners, and even customers.  New leaders must rise up and Microsoft must be able to see itself as a winner.  If Microsoft does this, it could lock-in decades of new success, and be a standard business school case study for doing so.  If not, the company will have missed an opportunity, and may see its undoing.

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  • People, Process & Engagement: WebCenter Partner Keste

    - by Michael Snow
    v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Within the WebCenter group here at Oracle, discussions about people, process and engagement cross over many vertical industries and products. Amidst our growing partner ecosystem, the community provides us insight into great customer use cases every day. Such is the case with our partner, Keste, who provides us a guest post on our blog today with an overview of their innovative solution for a customer in the transportation industry. Keste is an Oracle software solutions and development company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. As a Platinum member of the Oracle® PartnerNetwork, Keste designs, develops and deploys custom solutions that automate complex business processes. Seamless Customer Self-Service Experience in the Trucking Industry with Oracle WebCenter Portal  Keste, Oracle Platinum Partner Customer Overview Omnitracs, Inc., a Qualcomm company provides mobility solutions for trucking fleets to companies in the transportation industry. Omnitracs’ mobility services include basic communications such as text as well as advanced monitoring services such as GPS tracking, temperature tracking of perishable goods, load tracking and weighting distribution, and many others. Customer Business Needs Already the leading provider of mobility solutions for large trucking fleets, they chose to target smaller trucking fleets as new customers. However their existing high-touch customer support method would not be a cost effective or scalable method to manage and service these smaller customers. Omnitracs needed to provide several self-service features to make customer support more scalable while keeping customer satisfaction levels high and the costs manageable. The solution also had to be very intuitive and easy to use. The systems that Omnitracs sells to these trucking customers require professional installation and smaller customers need to track and schedule the installation. Information captured in Oracle eBusiness Suite needed to be readily available for new customers to track these purchases and delivery details. Omnitracs wanted a high impact User Interface to significantly improve customer experience with the ability to integrate with EBS, provisioning systems as well as CRM systems that were already implemented. Omnitracs also wanted to build an architecture platform that could potentially be extended to other Portals. Omnitracs’ stated goal was to deliver an “eBay-like” or “Amazon-like” experience for all of their customers so that they could reach a much broader market beyond their large company customer base. Solution Overview In order to manage the increased complexity, the growing support needs of global customers and improve overall product time-to-market in a cost-effective manner, IT began to deliver a self-service model. This self service model not only transformed numerous business processes but is also allowing the business to keep up with the growing demands of the (internal and external) customers. This solution was a customer service Portal that provided self service capabilities for large and small customers alike for Activation of mobility products, managing add-on applications for the devices (much like the Apple App Store), transferring services when trucks are sold to other companies as well as deactivation all without the involvement of a call service agent or sending multiple emails to different Omnitracs contacts. This is a conceptual view of the Customer Portal showing the details of the components that make up the solution. 12.00 The portal application for transactions was entirely built using ADF 11g R2. Omnitracs’ business had a pressing requirement to have a portal available 24/7 for its customers. Since there were interactions with EBS in the back-end, the downtimes on the EBS would negate this availability. Omnitracs devised a decoupling strategy at the database side for the EBS data. The decoupling of the database was done using Oracle Data Guard and completely insulated the solution from any eBusiness Suite down time. The customer has no knowledge whether eBS is running or not. Here are two sample screenshots of the portal application built in Oracle ADF. Customer Benefits The Customer Portal not only provided the scalability to grow the business but also provided the seamless integration with other disparate applications. Some of the key benefits are: Improved Customer Experience: With a modern look and feel and a Portal that has the aspects of an App Store, the customer experience was significantly improved. Page response times went from several seconds to sub-second for all of the pages. Enabled new product launches: After successfully dominating the large fleet market, Omnitracs now has a scalable solution to sell and manage smaller fleet customers giving them a huge advantage over their nearest competitors. Dozens of new customers have been acquired via this portal through an onboarding process that now takes minutes Seamless Integrations Improves Customer Support: ADF 11gR2 allowed Omnitracs to bring a diverse list of applications into one integrated solution. This provided a seamless experience for customers to route them from Marketing focused application to a customer-oriented portal. Internally, it also allowed Sales Representatives to have an integrated flow for taking a prospect through the various steps to onboard them as a customer. Key integrations included: Unity Core Salesforce.com Merchant e-Solution for credit card Custom Omnitracs Applications like CUPS and AUTO Security utilizing OID and OVD Back end integration with EBS (Data Guard) and iQ Database Business Impact Significant business impacts were realized through the launch of customer portal. It not only allows the business to push through in underserved segments, but also reduces the time it needs to spend on customer support—allowing the business to focus more on sales and identifying the market for new products. Some of the Immediate Benefits are The entire onboarding process is now completely automated and now completes in minutes. This represents an 85% productivity improvement over their previous processes. And it was 160 times faster! With the success of this self-service solution, the business is now targeting about 3X customer growth in the next five years. This represents a tripling of their overall customer base and significant downstream revenue for the ongoing services. 90%+ improvement of customer onboarding and management process by utilizing, single sign on integration using OID/OAM solution, performance improvements and new self-service functionality Unified login for all Customers, Partners and Internal Users enables login to a common portal and seamless access to all other integrated applications targeted at the respective audience Significantly improved customer experience with a better look and feel with a more user experience focused Portal screens. Helped sales of the new product by having an easy way of ordering and activating the product. Data Guard helped increase availability of the Portal to 99%+ and make it independent of EBS downtime. This gave customers the feel of high availability of the portal application. Some of the anticipated longer term Benefits are: Platform that can be leveraged to launch any new product introduction and enable all product teams to reach new customers and new markets Easy integration with content management to allow business owners more control of the product catalog Overall reduced TCO with standardization of the Oracle platform Managed IT support cost savings through optimization of technology skills needed to support and modify this solution ------------------------------------------------------------ 12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 -"/ /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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  • Pluggable Rules for Entity Framework Code First

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Suppose you want a system that lets you plug custom validation rules on your Entity Framework context. The rules would control whether an entity can be saved, updated or deleted, and would be implemented in plain .NET. Yes, I know I already talked about plugable validation in Entity Framework Code First, but this is a different approach. An example API is in order, first, a ruleset, which will hold the collection of rules: 1: public interface IRuleset : IDisposable 2: { 3: void AddRule<T>(IRule<T> rule); 4: IEnumerable<IRule<T>> GetRules<T>(); 5: } Next, a rule: 1: public interface IRule<T> 2: { 3: Boolean CanSave(T entity, DbContext ctx); 4: Boolean CanUpdate(T entity, DbContext ctx); 5: Boolean CanDelete(T entity, DbContext ctx); 6: String Name 7: { 8: get; 9: } 10: } Let’s analyze what we have, starting with the ruleset: Only has methods for adding a rule, specific to an entity type, and to list all rules of this entity type; By implementing IDisposable, we allow it to be cancelled, by disposing of it when we no longer want its rules to be applied. A rule, on the other hand: Has discrete methods for checking if a given entity can be saved, updated or deleted, which receive as parameters the entity itself and a pointer to the DbContext to which the ruleset was applied; Has a name property for helping us identifying what failed. A ruleset really doesn’t need a public implementation, all we need is its interface. The private (internal) implementation might look like this: 1: sealed class Ruleset : IRuleset 2: { 3: private readonly IDictionary<Type, HashSet<Object>> rules = new Dictionary<Type, HashSet<Object>>(); 4: private ObjectContext octx = null; 5:  6: internal Ruleset(ObjectContext octx) 7: { 8: this.octx = octx; 9: } 10:  11: public void AddRule<T>(IRule<T> rule) 12: { 13: if (this.rules.ContainsKey(typeof(T)) == false) 14: { 15: this.rules[typeof(T)] = new HashSet<Object>(); 16: } 17:  18: this.rules[typeof(T)].Add(rule); 19: } 20:  21: public IEnumerable<IRule<T>> GetRules<T>() 22: { 23: if (this.rules.ContainsKey(typeof(T)) == true) 24: { 25: foreach (IRule<T> rule in this.rules[typeof(T)]) 26: { 27: yield return (rule); 28: } 29: } 30: } 31:  32: public void Dispose() 33: { 34: this.octx.SavingChanges -= RulesExtensions.OnSaving; 35: RulesExtensions.rulesets.Remove(this.octx); 36: this.octx = null; 37:  38: this.rules.Clear(); 39: } 40: } Basically, this implementation: Stores the ObjectContext of the DbContext to which it was created for, this is so that later we can remove the association; Has a collection - a set, actually, which does not allow duplication - of rules indexed by the real Type of an entity (because of proxying, an entity may be of a type that inherits from the class that we declared); Has generic methods for adding and enumerating rules of a given type; Has a Dispose method for cancelling the enforcement of the rules. A (really dumb) rule applied to Product might look like this: 1: class ProductRule : IRule<Product> 2: { 3: #region IRule<Product> Members 4:  5: public String Name 6: { 7: get 8: { 9: return ("Rule 1"); 10: } 11: } 12:  13: public Boolean CanSave(Product entity, DbContext ctx) 14: { 15: return (entity.Price > 10000); 16: } 17:  18: public Boolean CanUpdate(Product entity, DbContext ctx) 19: { 20: return (true); 21: } 22:  23: public Boolean CanDelete(Product entity, DbContext ctx) 24: { 25: return (true); 26: } 27:  28: #endregion 29: } The DbContext is there because we may need to check something else in the database before deciding whether to allow an operation or not. And here’s how to apply this mechanism to any DbContext, without requiring the usage of a subclass, by means of an extension method: 1: public static class RulesExtensions 2: { 3: private static readonly MethodInfo getRulesMethod = typeof(IRuleset).GetMethod("GetRules"); 4: internal static readonly IDictionary<ObjectContext, Tuple<IRuleset, DbContext>> rulesets = new Dictionary<ObjectContext, Tuple<IRuleset, DbContext>>(); 5:  6: private static Type GetRealType(Object entity) 7: { 8: return (entity.GetType().Assembly.IsDynamic == true ? entity.GetType().BaseType : entity.GetType()); 9: } 10:  11: internal static void OnSaving(Object sender, EventArgs e) 12: { 13: ObjectContext octx = sender as ObjectContext; 14: IRuleset ruleset = rulesets[octx].Item1; 15: DbContext ctx = rulesets[octx].Item2; 16:  17: foreach (ObjectStateEntry entry in octx.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Added)) 18: { 19: Object entity = entry.Entity; 20: Type realType = GetRealType(entity); 21:  22: foreach (dynamic rule in (getRulesMethod.MakeGenericMethod(realType).Invoke(ruleset, null) as IEnumerable)) 23: { 24: if (rule.CanSave(entity, ctx) == false) 25: { 26: throw (new Exception(String.Format("Cannot save entity {0} due to rule {1}", entity, rule.Name))); 27: } 28: } 29: } 30:  31: foreach (ObjectStateEntry entry in octx.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Deleted)) 32: { 33: Object entity = entry.Entity; 34: Type realType = GetRealType(entity); 35:  36: foreach (dynamic rule in (getRulesMethod.MakeGenericMethod(realType).Invoke(ruleset, null) as IEnumerable)) 37: { 38: if (rule.CanDelete(entity, ctx) == false) 39: { 40: throw (new Exception(String.Format("Cannot delete entity {0} due to rule {1}", entity, rule.Name))); 41: } 42: } 43: } 44:  45: foreach (ObjectStateEntry entry in octx.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Modified)) 46: { 47: Object entity = entry.Entity; 48: Type realType = GetRealType(entity); 49:  50: foreach (dynamic rule in (getRulesMethod.MakeGenericMethod(realType).Invoke(ruleset, null) as IEnumerable)) 51: { 52: if (rule.CanUpdate(entity, ctx) == false) 53: { 54: throw (new Exception(String.Format("Cannot update entity {0} due to rule {1}", entity, rule.Name))); 55: } 56: } 57: } 58: } 59:  60: public static IRuleset CreateRuleset(this DbContext context) 61: { 62: Tuple<IRuleset, DbContext> ruleset = null; 63: ObjectContext octx = (context as IObjectContextAdapter).ObjectContext; 64:  65: if (rulesets.TryGetValue(octx, out ruleset) == false) 66: { 67: ruleset = rulesets[octx] = new Tuple<IRuleset, DbContext>(new Ruleset(octx), context); 68: 69: octx.SavingChanges += OnSaving; 70: } 71:  72: return (ruleset.Item1); 73: } 74: } It relies on the SavingChanges event of the ObjectContext to intercept the saving operations before they are actually issued. Yes, it uses a bit of dynamic magic! Very handy, by the way! So, let’s put it all together: 1: using (MyContext ctx = new MyContext()) 2: { 3: IRuleset rules = ctx.CreateRuleset(); 4: rules.AddRule(new ProductRule()); 5:  6: ctx.Products.Add(new Product() { Name = "xyz", Price = 50000 }); 7:  8: ctx.SaveChanges(); //an exception is fired here 9:  10: //when we no longer need to apply the rules 11: rules.Dispose(); 12: } Feel free to use it and extend it any way you like, and do give me your feedback! As a final note, this can be easily changed to support plain old Entity Framework (not Code First, that is), if that is what you are using.

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  • Need AngularJS grid resizing directive to resize "thumbnail" that contains no image

    - by thebravedave
    UPDATE Plunker to project: http://plnkr.co/edit/oKB96szQhqwpKQbOGUDw?p=preview I have an AngularJS project that uses AngularJS Bootstrap grids. I need all of the grid elements to have the same size so they stack properly. I created an angularJs directive that auto resizes the grid element when placed in said grid element. I have 2 directives that do this for me Directive 1: onload Directive 2: imageonload Directive 2 works. If the grid element uses an image, after the image loads then the directive triggers an event that sends the grid elements height to all other grid elements. If that height sent out via the event is greater than that of the grid element which is listening to the event then that listening grid element changes it's height to be the greater height. This way the largest height becomes the height for all the grid elements. Directive 1 does not work. This one is placed on the outer most grid elements html element, and is triggered when the element loads. The problem is that when the element loads and the onload directive is called AngularJS has not yet filled out the data in said grid element. The outcome is that the real height after AngularJS data binds is not broadcast as an event. My only solution I have thought of (but haven't tried) is to add an image url to an image that exists but doesn't have any data in it, and place that in the grid element (the one that didn't have any images before placing the blank one in). I could then call imageonload instead of onload and I pretty sure the angularjs data binding will have taken place by then. the problem is that that is pretty hacky. I would rather be able to have not an image in the grid element, and be able to call my custom onload directive and have the onload directive calculate the height AFTER angularJS data binds to all of the data binding variables in the grid element. Here is my imageonload directive .directive('imageonload', function($rootScope) { return { restrict: 'A', link: function(scope, element, attrs) { scope.heightArray = []; scope.largestHeight = 50; element.bind('load', function() { broadcastThumbnailHeight(); }); scope.$on('imageOnLoadEvent', function(caller, value){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var pageName = el.prop('title'); if(pageName == value[0]){ if(scope.largestHeight < value[1]){ scope.largestHeight = value[1]; var nestedString = el.prop('alt'); if(nestedString == "") nestedString = "1"; var nested = parseInt(nestedString); nested = nested - 1; var inte = 0; var thumbnail = el["0"]; var finalThumbnailContainer = thumbnail.parentElement; while(inte != nested){ finalThumbnailContainer = finalThumbnailContainer.parentElement; inte++; } var innerEl = angular.element(finalThumbnailContainer); var height = value[1]; innerEl.height(height); } } }); scope.$on('findHeightAndBroadcast', function(){ broadcastThumbnailHeight(); }); scope.$on('resetThumbnailHeight', function(){ scope.largestHeight = 50; }); function broadcastThumbnailHeight(){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var alt = el.prop('alt'); if(alt == "") alt = "1"; var nested = parseInt(alt); nested = nested - 1; var pageName = el.prop('title'); var inte = 1; var thumbnail = el["0"]; var finalThumbnail = thumbnail.parentElement; while(inte != nested){ finalThumbnail = finalThumbnail.parentElement; inte++; } var elZero = el["0"]; var clientHeight = finalThumbnail.clientHeight; var arr = []; arr[0] = pageName; arr[1] = clientHeight; $rootScope.$broadcast('imageOnLoadEvent', arr); } } }; }) And here is my onload directive .directive('onload', function($rootScope) { return { restrict: 'A', link: function(scope, element, attrs) { scope.largestHeight=100; getHeightAndBroadcast(); scope.$on('onLoadEvent', function(caller, value){ var el = angular.element(element); var id = el.prop('id'); var pageName = el.prop('title'); if(pageName == value[0]){ if(scope.largestHeight < value[1]){ scope.largestHeight = value[1]; var height = value[1]; el.height(height); } } }); function getHeightAndBroadcast(){ var el = angular.element(element); var h = el["0"].children; var thumbnailHeightElement = angular.element(h); var pageName = el.prop("title"); var clientHeight = thumbnailHeightElement["0"].clientHeight; var arr = []; arr[0] = pageName; arr[1] = clientHeight; if(clientHeight != undefined) $rootScope.$broadcast('onLoadEvent', arr); } } }; }) Here is an example of one of my grid elements that uses imageonload. Note the imageonload directive in the image html element. This works. There is also an onload directive on the outer most html of the grid element. That does not work. I have stepped through this carefully in Firebug and saw that the onload was calculating the height before AngularJS data binding was complete. <div class="thumbnail col-md-3" id="{{product.id}}" title="thumbnailAdminProductsGrid" onload> <div class="row"> <div class="containerz"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-2"></div> <div class="col-md-7"> <div class="textcenterinline"> <!--tag--><img class="img-responsive" id="{{product.id}}" title="imageAdminProductsGrid" alt=6 ng-src="{{product.baseImage}}" imageonload/><!--end tag--> </div> </div> </div> <div class="caption"> <div class="testing"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <h3 class=""> <!--tag--><a href="javascript:void(0);" ng-click="loadProductView('{{product.id}}')">{{product.name}}</a><!--end tag--> </h3> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p class="lead"><!--tag--> {{product.price}}</p><!--end tag--> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p><!--tag-->{{product.inStock}} units available<!--end tag--></p> </div> </div> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <p class=""><!--tag-->{{product.generalDescription}}<!--end tag--></p> </div> </div> <!--tag--> <div data-ng-if="product.specialized=='true'"> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12" ng-repeat="varCat in product.varietyCategoriesAndOptions"> <b><h4>{{varCat.varietyCategoryName}}</h4></b> <select ng-model="varCat.varietyCategoryOption" ng-options="value.varietyCategoryOptionId as value.varietyCategoryOptionValue for (key,value) in varCat.varietyCategoryOptions"> </select> </div> </div> </div> <!--end tag--> <div class="row-fluid"> <div class="col-md-12"> <!--tag--><div ng-if="product.weight==0"><b>Free Shipping</b></div><!--end tag--> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> Here is an example of one of the html for one of my grid elements that only uses the "onload" directive and not "imageonload" <div class="thumbnail col-md-3" title="thumbnailCouponGrid" onload> <div class="innnerContainer"> <div class="text-center"> {{coupon.name}} <br /> <br /> <b>Description</b> <br /> {{coupon.description}} <br /> <br /> <button class="btn btn-large btn-primary" ng-click="goToCoupon()">View Coupon Details</button> </div> </div> The imageonload function might look a little confusing because I use the img html attribute "alt" to signal to the directive how many levels the imageonload is placed below the outermost html for the grid element. We have to have this so the directive knows which html element to set the new height on. also I use the "title" attribute to set which grid this grid resizing is for (that way you can use the directive multiple times on the same page for different grids and not have the events for the wrong grid triggered). Does anyone know how I can get the "onload" directive to get called AFTER angularJS binds to the grid element? Just for completeness here are 2 images (almost looks like just 1), the second is a grid that contains grid elements that have images and use the "imageonload" directive and the first is a grid that contains grid elements that do not use images and only uses the "onload" directive.

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  • What&rsquo;s New in ASP.NET 4.0 Part Two: WebForms and Visual Studio Enhancements

    - by Rick Strahl
    In the last installment I talked about the core changes in the ASP.NET runtime that I’ve been taking advantage of. In this column, I’ll cover the changes to the Web Forms engine and some of the cool improvements in Visual Studio that make Web and general development easier. WebForms The WebForms engine is the area that has received most significant changes in ASP.NET 4.0. Probably the most widely anticipated features are related to managing page client ids and of ViewState on WebForm pages. Take Control of Your ClientIDs Unique ClientID generation in ASP.NET has been one of the most complained about “features” in ASP.NET. Although there’s a very good technical reason for these unique generated ids - they guarantee unique ids for each and every server control on a page - these unique and generated ids often get in the way of client-side JavaScript development and CSS styling as it’s often inconvenient and fragile to work with the long, generated ClientIDs. In ASP.NET 4.0 you can now specify an explicit client id mode on each control or each naming container parent control to control how client ids are generated. By default, ASP.NET generates mangled client ids for any control contained in a naming container (like a Master Page, or a User Control for example). The key to ClientID management in ASP.NET 4.0 are the new ClientIDMode and ClientIDRowSuffix properties. ClientIDMode supports four different ClientID generation settings shown below. For the following examples, imagine that you have a Textbox control named txtName inside of a master page control container on a WebForms page. <%@Page Language="C#"      MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master"     CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="WebApplication1.WebForm2"  %> <asp:Content ID="content"  ContentPlaceHolderID="content"               runat="server"               ClientIDMode="Static" >       <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName" /> </asp:Content> The four available ClientIDMode values are: AutoID This is the existing behavior in ASP.NET 1.x-3.x where full naming container munging takes place. <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"        id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> This should be familiar to any ASP.NET developer and results in fairly unpredictable client ids that can easily change if the containership hierarchy changes. For example, removing the master page changes the name in this case, so if you were to move a block of script code that works against the control to a non-Master page, the script code immediately breaks. Static This option is the most deterministic setting that forces the control’s ClientID to use its ID value directly. No naming container naming at all is applied and you end up with clean client ids: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName"         type="text" id="txtName" /> Note that the name property which is used for postback variables to the server still is munged, but the ClientID property is displayed simply as the ID value that you have assigned to the control. This option is what most of us want to use, but you have to be clear on that because it can potentially cause conflicts with other controls on the page. If there are several instances of the same naming container (several instances of the same user control for example) there can easily be a client id naming conflict. Note that if you assign Static to a data-bound control, like a list child control in templates, you do not get unique ids either, so for list controls where you rely on unique id for child controls, you’ll probably want to use Predictable rather than Static. I’ll write more on this a little later when I discuss ClientIDRowSuffix. Predictable The previous two values are pretty self-explanatory. Predictable however, requires some explanation. To me at least it’s not in the least bit predictable. MSDN defines this value as follows: This algorithm is used for controls that are in data-bound controls. The ClientID value is generated by concatenating the ClientID value of the parent naming container with the ID value of the control. If the control is a data-bound control that generates multiple rows, the value of the data field specified in the ClientIDRowSuffix property is added at the end. For the GridView control, multiple data fields can be specified. If the ClientIDRowSuffix property is blank, a sequential number is added at the end instead of a data-field value. Each segment is separated by an underscore character (_). The key that makes this value a bit confusing is that it relies on the parent NamingContainer’s ClientID to build its own ClientID value. This effectively means that the value is not predictable at all but rather very tightly coupled to the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For my simple textbox example, if the ClientIDMode property of the parent naming container (Page in this case) is set to “Predictable” you’ll get this: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="content_txtName" /> which gives an id that based on walking up to the currently active naming container (the MasterPage content container) and starting the id formatting from there downward. Think of this as a semi unique name that’s guaranteed unique only for the naming container. If, on the other hand, the Page is set to “AutoID” you get the following with Predictable on txtName: <input name="ctl00$content$txtName" type="text"         id="ctl00_content_txtName" /> The latter is effectively the same as if you specified AutoID because it inherits the AutoID naming from the Page and Content Master Page control of the page. But again - predictable behavior always depends on the parent naming container and how it generates its id, so the id may not always be exactly the same as the AutoID generated value because somewhere in the NamingContainer chain the ClientIDMode setting may be set to a different value. For example, if you had another naming container in the middle that was set to Static you’d end up effectively with an id that starts with the NamingContainers id rather than the whole ctl000_content munging. The most common use for Predictable is likely to be for data-bound controls, which results in each data bound item getting a unique ClientID. Unfortunately, even here the behavior can be very unpredictable depending on which data-bound control you use - I found significant differences in how template controls in a GridView behave from those that are used in a ListView control. For example, GridView creates clean child ClientIDs, while ListView still has a naming container in the ClientID, presumably because of the template container on which you can’t set ClientIDMode. Predictable is useful, but only if all naming containers down the chain use this setting. Otherwise you’re right back to the munged ids that are pretty unpredictable. Another property, ClientIDRowSuffix, can be used in combination with ClientIDMode of Predictable to force a suffix onto list client controls. For example: <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="gvItems"              AutoGenerateColumns="false"             ClientIDMode="Static"              ClientIDRowSuffix="Id">     <Columns>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>             <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtName"                        Text='<%# Eval("Name") %>'                   ClientIDMode="Predictable"/>         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     <asp:TemplateField>         <ItemTemplate>         <asp:Label runat="server" id="txtId"                     Text='<%# Eval("Id") %>'                     ClientIDMode="Predictable" />         </ItemTemplate>     </asp:TemplateField>     </Columns>  </asp:GridView> generates client Ids inside of a column in the master page described earlier: <td>     <span id="txtName_0">Rick</span> </td> where the value after the underscore is the ClientIDRowSuffix field - in this case “Id” of the item data bound to the control. Note that all of the child controls require ClientIDMode=”Predictable” in order for the ClientIDRowSuffix to be applied, and the parent GridView controls need to be set to Static either explicitly or via Naming Container inheritance to give these simple names. It’s a bummer that ClientIDRowSuffix doesn’t work with Static to produce this automatically. Another real problem is that other controls process the ClientIDMode differently. For example, a ListView control processes the Predictable ClientIDMode differently and produces the following with the Static ListView and Predictable child controls: <span id="ctrl0_txtName_0">Rick</span> I couldn’t even figure out a way using ClientIDMode to get a simple ID that also uses a suffix short of falling back to manually generated ids using <%= %> expressions instead. Given the inconsistencies inside of list controls using <%= %>, ids for the ListView might not be a bad idea anyway. Inherit The final setting is Inherit, which is the default for all controls except Page. This means that controls by default inherit the parent naming container’s ClientIDMode setting. For more detailed information on ClientID behavior and different scenarios you can check out a blog post of mine on this subject: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/54760.aspx. ClientID Enhancements Summary The ClientIDMode property is a welcome addition to ASP.NET 4.0. To me this is probably the most useful WebForms feature as it allows me to generate clean IDs simply by setting ClientIDMode="Static" on either the page or inside of Web.config (in the Pages section) which applies the setting down to the entire page which is my 95% scenario. For the few cases when it matters - for list controls and inside of multi-use user controls or custom server controls) - I can use Predictable or even AutoID to force controls to unique names. For application-level page development, this is easy to accomplish and provides maximum usability for working with client script code against page controls. ViewStateMode Another area of large criticism for WebForms is ViewState. ViewState is used internally by ASP.NET to persist page-level changes to non-postback properties on controls as pages post back to the server. It’s a useful mechanism that works great for the overall mechanics of WebForms, but it can also cause all sorts of overhead for page operation as ViewState can very quickly get out of control and consume huge amounts of bandwidth in your page content. ViewState can also wreak havoc with client-side scripting applications that modify control properties that are tracked by ViewState, which can produce very unpredictable results on a Postback after client-side updates. Over the years in my own development, I’ve often turned off ViewState on pages to reduce overhead. Yes, you lose some functionality, but you can easily implement most of the common functionality in non-ViewState workarounds. Relying less on heavy ViewState controls and sticking with simpler controls or raw HTML constructs avoids getting around ViewState problems. In ASP.NET 3.x and prior, it wasn’t easy to control ViewState - you could turn it on or off and if you turned it off at the page or web.config level, you couldn’t turn it back on for specific controls. In short, it was an all or nothing approach. With ASP.NET 4.0, the new ViewStateMode property gives you more control. It allows you to disable ViewState globally either on the page or web.config level and then turn it back on for specific controls that might need it. ViewStateMode only works when EnableViewState="true" on the page or web.config level (which is the default). You can then use ViewStateMode of Disabled, Enabled or Inherit to control the ViewState settings on the page. If you’re shooting for minimal ViewState usage, the ideal situation is to set ViewStateMode to disabled on the Page or web.config level and only turn it back on particular controls: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"        ClientIDMode="Static"                ViewStateMode="Disabled"     EnableViewState="true"  %> <!-- this control has viewstate  --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtName"  ViewStateMode="Enabled" />       <!-- this control has no viewstate - it inherits  from parent container --> <asp:TextBox runat="server" ID="txtAddress" /> Note that the EnableViewState="true" at the Page level isn’t required since it’s the default, but it’s important that the value is true. ViewStateMode has no effect if EnableViewState="false" at the page level. The main benefit of ViewStateMode is that it allows you to more easily turn off ViewState for most of the page and enable only a few key controls that might need it. For me personally, this is a perfect combination as most of my WebForm apps can get away without any ViewState at all. But some controls - especially third party controls - often don’t work well without ViewState enabled, and now it’s much easier to selectively enable controls rather than the old way, which required you to pretty much turn off ViewState for all controls that you didn’t want ViewState on. Inline HTML Encoding HTML encoding is an important feature to prevent cross-site scripting attacks in data entered by users on your site. In order to make it easier to create HTML encoded content, ASP.NET 4.0 introduces a new Expression syntax using <%: %> to encode string values. The encoding expression syntax looks like this: <%: "<script type='text/javascript'>" +     "alert('Really?');</script>" %> which produces properly encoded HTML: &lt;script type=&#39;text/javascript&#39; &gt;alert(&#39;Really?&#39;);&lt;/script&gt; Effectively this is a shortcut to: <%= HttpUtility.HtmlEncode( "<script type='text/javascript'>" + "alert('Really?');</script>") %> Of course the <%: %> syntax can also evaluate expressions just like <%= %> so the more common scenario applies this expression syntax against data your application is displaying. Here’s an example displaying some data model values: <%: Model.Address.Street %> This snippet shows displaying data from your application’s data store or more importantly, from data entered by users. Anything that makes it easier and less verbose to HtmlEncode text is a welcome addition to avoid potential cross-site scripting attacks. Although I listed Inline HTML Encoding here under WebForms, anything that uses the WebForms rendering engine including ASP.NET MVC, benefits from this feature. ScriptManager Enhancements The ASP.NET ScriptManager control in the past has introduced some nice ways to take programmatic and markup control over script loading, but there were a number of shortcomings in this control. The ASP.NET 4.0 ScriptManager has a number of improvements that make it easier to control script loading and addresses a few of the shortcomings that have often kept me from using the control in favor of manual script loading. The first is the AjaxFrameworkMode property which finally lets you suppress loading the ASP.NET AJAX runtime. Disabled doesn’t load any ASP.NET AJAX libraries, but there’s also an Explicit mode that lets you pick and choose the library pieces individually and reduce the footprint of ASP.NET AJAX script included if you are using the library. There’s also a new EnableCdn property that forces any script that has a new WebResource attribute CdnPath property set to a CDN supplied URL. If the script has this Attribute property set to a non-null/empty value and EnableCdn is enabled on the ScriptManager, that script will be served from the specified CdnPath. [assembly: WebResource(    "Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js",    "application/x-javascript",    CdnPath =  "http://mysite.com/scripts/ww.jquery.min.js")] Cool, but a little too static for my taste since this value can’t be changed at runtime to point at a debug script as needed, for example. Assembly names for loading scripts from resources can now be simple names rather than fully qualified assembly names, which make it less verbose to reference scripts from assemblies loaded from your bin folder or the assembly reference area in web.config: <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <Scripts>         <asp:ScriptReference          Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.ww.jquery.js"         Assembly="Westwind.Web" />     </Scripts>        </asp:ScriptManager> The ScriptManager in 4.0 also supports script combining via the CompositeScript tag, which allows you to very easily combine scripts into a single script resource served via ASP.NET. Even nicer: You can specify the URL that the combined script is served with. Check out the following script manager markup that combines several static file scripts and a script resource into a single ASP.NET served resource from a static URL (allscripts.js): <asp:ScriptManager runat="server" id="Id"          EnableCdn="true"         AjaxFrameworkMode="disabled">     <CompositeScript          Path="~/scripts/allscripts.js">         <Scripts>             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference                    Path="~/scripts/ww.jquery.js" />             <asp:ScriptReference            Name="Westwind.Web.Resources.editors.js"                 Assembly="Westwind.Web" />         </Scripts>     </CompositeScript> </asp:ScriptManager> When you render this into HTML, you’ll see a single script reference in the page: <script src="scripts/allscripts.debug.js"          type="text/javascript"></script> All you need to do to make this work is ensure that allscripts.js and allscripts.debug.js exist in the scripts folder of your application - they can be empty but the file has to be there. This is pretty cool, but you want to be real careful that you use unique URLs for each combination of scripts you combine or else browser and server caching will easily screw you up royally. The script manager also allows you to override native ASP.NET AJAX scripts now as any script references defined in the Scripts section of the ScriptManager trump internal references. So if you want custom behavior or you want to fix a possible bug in the core libraries that normally are loaded from resources, you can now do this simply by referencing the script resource name in the Name property and pointing at System.Web for the assembly. Not a common scenario, but when you need it, it can come in real handy. Still, there are a number of shortcomings in this control. For one, the ScriptManager and ClientScript APIs still have no common entry point so control developers are still faced with having to check and support both APIs to load scripts so that controls can work on pages that do or don’t have a ScriptManager on the page. The CdnUrl is static and compiled in, which is very restrictive. And finally, there’s still no control over where scripts get loaded on the page - ScriptManager still injects scripts into the middle of the HTML markup rather than in the header or optionally the footer. This, in turn, means there is little control over script loading order, which can be problematic for control developers. MetaDescription, MetaKeywords Page Properties There are also a number of additional Page properties that correspond to some of the other features discussed in this column: ClientIDMode, ClientTarget and ViewStateMode. Another minor but useful feature is that you can now directly access the MetaDescription and MetaKeywords properties on the Page object to set the corresponding meta tags programmatically. Updating these values programmatically previously required either <%= %> expressions in the page markup or dynamic insertion of literal controls into the page. You can now just set these properties programmatically on the Page object in any Control derived class on the page or the Page itself: Page.MetaKeywords = "ASP.NET,4.0,New Features"; Page.MetaDescription = "This article discusses the new features in ASP.NET 4.0"; Note, that there’s no corresponding ASP.NET tag for the HTML Meta element, so the only way to specify these values in markup and access them is via the @Page tag: <%@Page Language="C#"      CodeBehind="WebForm2.aspx.cs"     Inherits="Westwind.WebStore.WebForm2"      ClientIDMode="Static"                MetaDescription="Article that discusses what's                      new in ASP.NET 4.0"     MetaKeywords="ASP.NET,4.0,New Features" %> Nothing earth shattering but quite convenient. Visual Studio 2010 Enhancements for Web Development For Web development there are also a host of editor enhancements in Visual Studio 2010. Some of these are not Web specific but they are useful for Web developers in general. Text Editors Throughout Visual Studio 2010, the text editors have all been updated to a new core engine based on WPF which provides some interesting new features for various code editors including the nice ability to zoom in and out with Ctrl-MouseWheel to quickly change the size of text. There are many more API options to control the editor and although Visual Studio 2010 doesn’t yet use many of these features, we can look forward to enhancements in add-ins and future editor updates from the various language teams that take advantage of the visual richness that WPF provides to editing. On the negative side, I’ve noticed that occasionally the code editor and especially the HTML and JavaScript editors will lose the ability to use various navigation keys like arrows, back and delete keys, which requires closing and reopening the documents at times. This issue seems to be well documented so I suspect this will be addressed soon with a hotfix or within the first service pack. Overall though, the code editors work very well, especially given that they were re-written completely using WPF, which was one of my big worries when I first heard about the complete redesign of the editors. Multi-Targeting Visual Studio now targets all versions of the .NET framework from 2.0 forward. You can use Visual Studio 2010 to work on your ASP.NET 2, 3.0 and 3.5 applications which is a nice way to get your feet wet with the new development environment without having to make changes to existing applications. It’s nice to have one tool to work in for all the different versions. Multi-Monitor Support One cool feature of Visual Studio 2010 is the ability to drag windows out of the Visual Studio environment and out onto the desktop including onto another monitor easily. Since Web development often involves working with a host of designers at the same time - visual designer, HTML markup window, code behind and JavaScript editor - it’s really nice to be able to have a little more screen real estate to work on each of these editors. Microsoft made a welcome change in the environment. IntelliSense Snippets for HTML and JavaScript Editors The HTML and JavaScript editors now finally support IntelliSense scripts to create macro-based template expansions that have been in the core C# and Visual Basic code editors since Visual Studio 2005. Snippets allow you to create short XML-based template definitions that can act as static macros or real templates that can have replaceable values that can be embedded into the expanded text. The XML syntax for these snippets is straight forward and it’s pretty easy to create custom snippets manually. You can easily create snippets using XML and store them in your custom snippets folder (C:\Users\rstrahl\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Code Snippets\Visual Web Developer\My HTML Snippets and My JScript Snippets), but it helps to use one of the third-party tools that exist to simplify the process for you. I use SnippetEditor, by Bill McCarthy, which makes short work of creating snippets interactively (http://snippeteditor.codeplex.com/). Note: You may have to manually add the Visual Studio 2010 User specific Snippet folders to this tool to see existing ones you’ve created. Code snippets are some of the biggest time savers and HTML editing more than anything deals with lots of repetitive tasks that lend themselves to text expansion. Visual Studio 2010 includes a slew of built-in snippets (that you can also customize!) and you can create your own very easily. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to spend a little time examining your coding patterns and find the repetitive code that you write and convert it into snippets. I’ve been using CodeRush for this for years, but now you can do much of the basic expansion natively for HTML and JavaScript snippets. jQuery Integration Is Now Native jQuery is a popular JavaScript library and recently Microsoft has recently stated that it will become the primary client-side scripting technology to drive higher level script functionality in various ASP.NET Web projects that Microsoft provides. In Visual Studio 2010, the default full project template includes jQuery as part of a new project including the support files that provide IntelliSense (-vsdoc files). IntelliSense support for jQuery is now also baked into Visual Studio 2010, so unlike Visual Studio 2008 which required a separate download, no further installs are required for a rich IntelliSense experience with jQuery. Summary ASP.NET 4.0 brings many useful improvements to the platform, but thankfully most of the changes are incremental changes that don’t compromise backwards compatibility and they allow developers to ease into the new features one feature at a time. None of the changes in ASP.NET 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010 are monumental or game changers. The bigger features are language and .NET Framework changes that are also optional. This ASP.NET and tools release feels more like fine tuning and getting some long-standing kinks worked out of the platform. It shows that the ASP.NET team is dedicated to paying attention to community feedback and responding with changes to the platform and development environment based on this feedback. If you haven’t gotten your feet wet with ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010, there’s no reason not to give it a shot now - the ASP.NET 4.0 platform is solid and Visual Studio 2010 works very well for a brand new release. Check it out. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET  

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  • Easily Tweak Windows 7 and Vista by Adding Tabs to Explorer, Creating Context Menu Entries, and More

    - by Lori Kaufman
    7Plus is a very useful, free tool for Windows 7 and Vista that adds a lot of features to Windows, such as the ability to add tabs to Windows Explorer, set up hotkeys for common tasks, and other settings to make working with Windows easier. 7Plus is powered by AutoHotkey and allows most of the features to be fully customized. You can also create your own features by creating custom events. 7Plus does not need to be installed. Simply extract the files from the .zip file you downloaded (see the link at the end of this article) and double-click on the 7plus.exe file. HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference How To Troubleshoot Internet Connection Problems

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  • Adobe Photoshop Vs Lightroom Vs Aperture

    - by Aditi
    Adobe Photoshop is the standard choice for photographers, graphic artists and Web designers. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom  & Apple’s Aperture are also in the same league but the usage is vastly different. Although Photoshop is most popular & widely used by photographers, but in many ways it’s less relevant to photographers than ever before. As Lightroom & Aperture is aimed squarely at photographers for photo-processing. With this write up we are going to help you choose what is right for you and why. Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is the most liked tool for the detailed photo editing & designing work. Photoshop provides great features for rollover and Image slicing. Adobe Photoshop includes comprehensive optimization features for producing the highest quality Web graphics with the smallest possible file sizes. You can also create startling animations with it. Designers & Editors know how important precise masking is, PhotoShop lets you do that with various detailing tools. Art history brush, contact sheets, and history palette are some of the smart features, which add to its viability. Download Whether you’re producing printed pages or moving images, you can work more efficiently and produce better results because of its smooth integration across other adobe applications. Buy supporting layer effects, it allows you to quickly add drop shadows, inner and outer glows, bevels, and embossing to layers. It also provides Seamless Web Graphics Workflow. Photoshop is hands-down the BEST for editing. Photoshop Cons: • Slower, less precise editing features in Bridge • Processing lots of images requires actions and can be slower than exporting images from Lightroom • Much slower with editing and processing a large number of images Aperture Apple Aperture is aimed at the professional photographer who shoots predominantly raw files. It helps them to manage their workflow and perform their initial Raw conversion in a better way. Aperture provides adjustment tools such as Histogram to modify color and white balance, but most of the editing of photos is left for Photoshop. It gives users the option of seeing their photographs laid out like slides or negatives on a light table. It boasts of – stars, color-coding and easy techniques for filtering and picking images. Aperture has moved forward few steps than Photoshop, but most of the editing work has been left for Photoshop as it features seamless Photoshop integration. Aperture Pros: Aperture is a step up from the iPhoto software that comes with every Mac, and fairly easy to learn. Adjustments are made in a logical order from top to bottom of the menu. You can store the images in a library or any folder you choose. Aperture also works really well with direct Canon files. It is just $79 if you buy it through Apple’s App Store Moving forward, it will run on the iPad, and possibly the iPhone – Adobe products like Lightroom and Photoshop may never offer these options It is much nicer and simpler user interface. Lightroom Lightroom does a smashing job of basic fixing and editing. It is more advanced tool for photographers. They can use it to have a startling photography effect. Light room has many advanced features, which makes it one of the best tools for photographers and far ahead of the other two. They are Nondestructive editing. Nothing is actually changed in an image until the photo is exported. Better controls over organizing your photos. Lightroom helps to gather a group of photos to use in a slideshow. Lightroom has larger Compare and Survey views of images. Quickly customizable interface. Simple keystrokes allow you to perform different All Lightroom controls are kept available in panels right next to the photos. Always-available History palette, it doesn’t go when you close lightroom. You gain more colors to work with compared to Photoshop and with more precise control. Local control, or adjusting small parts of a photo without affecting anything else, has long been an important part of photography. In Lightroom 2, you can darken, lighten, and affect color and change sharpness and other aspects of specific areas in the photo simply by brushing your cursor across the areas. Photoshop has far more power in its Cloning and Healing Brush tools than Lightroom, but Lightroom offers simple cloning and healing that’s nondestructive. Lightroom supports the RAW formats of more cameras than Aperture. Lightroom provides the option of storing images outside the application in the file system. It costs less than photoshop. Download Why PhotoShop is advanced than Lightroom? There are countless image processing plug-ins on the market for doing specialized processing in Photoshop. For example, if your image needs sophisticated noise reduction, you can use the Noiseware plug-in with Photoshop to do a much better job or noise removal than Lightroom can do. Lightroom’s advantages over Aperture 3 Will always have better integration with Photoshop. Lightroom is backed by bigger and more active user community (So abundant availability for tutorials, etc.) Better noise reduction tool. Especially for photographers the Lens-distortion correction tool  is perfect Lightroom Cons: • Have to Import images to work on them • Slows down with over 10,000 images in the catalog • For processing just one or two images this is a slower workflow Photoshop Pros: • ACR has the same RAW processing controls as Lightroom • ACR Histogram is specialized to the chosen color space (Lightroom is locked into ProPhoto RGB color space with an sRGB tone curve) • Don’t have to Import images to open in Bridge or ACR • Ability to customize processing of RAW images with Photoshop Actions Pricing and Availability Get LightRoomGet PhotoShop Latest version Of Photoshop can be purchased from Adobe store and Adobe authorized reseller and it costs US$999. Latest version of Aperture can be bought for US$199 from Apple Online store or Mac App Store. You can buy latest version of LightRoom from Adobe Store or Adobe Authorized reseller for US$299. Related posts:Adobe Photoshop CS5 vs Photoshop CS5 extended Web based Alternatives to Photoshop 10 Free Alternatives for Adobe Photoshop Software

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  • Announcing SonicAgile – An Agile Project Management Solution

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I’m happy to announce the public release of SonicAgile – an online tool for managing software projects. You can register for SonicAgile at www.SonicAgile.com and start using it with your team today. SonicAgile is an agile project management solution which is designed to help teams of developers coordinate their work on software projects. SonicAgile supports creating backlogs, scrumboards, and burndown charts. It includes support for acceptance criteria, story estimation, calculating team velocity, and email integration. In short, SonicAgile includes all of the tools that you need to coordinate work on a software project, get stuff done, and build great software. Let me discuss each of the features of SonicAgile in more detail. SonicAgile Backlog You use the backlog to create a prioritized list of user stories such as features, bugs, and change requests. Basically, all future work planned for a product should be captured in the backlog. We focused our attention on designing the user interface for the backlog. Because the main function of the backlog is to prioritize stories, we made it easy to prioritize a story by just drag and dropping the story from one location to another. We also wanted to make it easy to add stories from the product backlog to a sprint backlog. A sprint backlog contains the stories that you plan to complete during a particular sprint. To add a story to a sprint, you just drag the story from the product backlog to the sprint backlog. Finally, we made it easy to track team velocity — the average amount of work that your team completes in each sprint. Your team’s average velocity is displayed in the backlog. When you add too many stories to a sprint – in other words, you attempt to take on too much work – you are warned automatically: SonicAgile Scrumboard Every workday, your team meets to have their daily scrum. During the daily scrum, you can use the SonicAgile Scrumboard to see (at a glance) what everyone on the team is working on. For example, the following scrumboard shows that Stephen is working on the Fix Gravatar Bug story and Pete and Jane have finished working on the Product Details Page story: Every story can be broken into tasks. For example, to create the Product Details Page, you might need to create database objects, do page design, and create an MVC controller. You can use the Scrumboard to track the state of each task. A story can have acceptance criteria which clarify the requirements for the story to be done. For example, here is how you can specify the acceptance criteria for the Product Details Page story: You cannot close a story — and remove the story from the list of active stories on the scrumboard — until all tasks and acceptance criteria associated with the story are done. SonicAgile Burndown Charts You can use Burndown charts to track your team’s progress. SonicAgile supports Release Burndown, Sprint Burndown by Task Estimates, and Sprint Burndown by Story Points charts. For example, here’s a sample of a Sprint Burndown by Story Points chart: The downward slope shows the progress of the team when closing stories. The vertical axis represents story points and the horizontal axis represents time. Email Integration SonicAgile was designed to improve your team’s communication and collaboration. Most stories and tasks require discussion to nail down exactly what work needs to be done. The most natural way to discuss stories and tasks is through email. However, you don’t want these discussions to get lost. When you use SonicAgile, all email discussions concerning a story or a task (including all email attachments) are captured automatically. At any time in the future, you can view all of the email discussion concerning a story or a task by opening the Story Details dialog: Why We Built SonicAgile We built SonicAgile because we needed it for our team. Our consulting company, Superexpert, builds websites for financial services, startups, and large corporations. We have multiple teams working on multiple projects. Keeping on top of all of the work that needs to be done to complete a software project is challenging. You need a good sense of what needs to be done, who is doing it, and when the work will be done. We built SonicAgile because we wanted a lightweight project management tool which we could use to coordinate the work that our team performs on software projects. How We Built SonicAgile We wanted SonicAgile to be easy to use, highly scalable, and have a highly interactive client interface. SonicAgile is very close to being a pure Ajax application. We built SonicAgile using ASP.NET MVC 3, jQuery, and Knockout. We would not have been able to build such a complex Ajax application without these technologies. Almost all of our MVC controller actions return JSON results (While developing SonicAgile, I would have given my left arm to be able to use the new ASP.NET Web API). The controller actions are invoked from jQuery Ajax calls from the browser. We built SonicAgile on Windows Azure. We are taking advantage of SQL Azure, Table Storage, and Blob Storage. Windows Azure enables us to scale very quickly to handle whatever demand is thrown at us. Summary I hope that you will try SonicAgile. You can register at www.SonicAgile.com (there’s a free 30-day trial). The goal of SonicAgile is to make it easier for teams to get more stuff done, work better together, and build amazing software. Let us know what you think!

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  • Installing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Service Pack 1

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    As has become customary when the product team releases a new patch, SP or version I like to document the install. Although I had no errors on my main computer, my netbook did have problems. Although I am not ready to call it a Service Pack problem just yet! Update 2011-03-10 – Running the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 install a second time worked As per Brian's post I am installing the Team Foundation Server Service Pack first and indeed as this is a single server local deployment I need to install both. If I only install one it will leave the other product broken. This however does not affect you if you are running Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server on separate computers as is normal in a production deployment. Main workhorse I will be installing the service pack first on my main computer as I want to actually use it here. Figure: My main workhorse I will also be installing this on my netbook which is obviously of significantly lower spec, but I will do that one after. Although, as always I had my fingers crossed, I was not really worried. Figure: KB2182621 Compared to Visual Studio there are not really a lot of components to update. Figure: TFS 2010 and SQL 2008 are the main things to update There is no “web” installer for the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack, but that is ok as most people will be installing it on a production server and will want to have everything local. I would have liked a Web installer, but the added complexity for the product team is not work the capability for a 500mb patch. Figure: There is currently no way to roll SP1 and RTM together Figure: No problems with the file verification, phew Figure: Although the install took a while, it progressed smoothly   Figure: I always like a success screen Well, as far as the install is concerned everything is OK, but what about TFS? Can I still connect and can I still administer it. Figure: Service Pack 1 is reflected correctly in the Administration Console I am confident that there are no major problems with TFS on my system and that it has been updated to SP1. I can do all of the things that I used before with ease, and with the new features detailed by Brian I think I will be happy. Netbook The great god Murphy has stuck, and my poor wee laptop spat the Team Foundation Server 2010 Service Pack 1 out so fast it hit me on the back of the head. That will teach me for not looking… Figure: “Installation did not succeed” I am pretty sure should not be all caps! On examining the file I found that everything worked, except the actual Team Foundation Server 2010 serving step. Action: System Requirement Checks... Action complete Action: Downloading and/or Verifying Items c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp: Verifying signature for VS10-KB2182621.msp c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp Signature verified successfully for VS10-KB2182621.msp c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACFramework_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACFramework_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACFramework_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi: Verifying signature for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi Exists: evaluating Exists evaluated to false c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for DACProjectSystemSetup_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi: Verifying signature for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for TSqlLanguageService_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SharedManagementObjects_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_x86_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi: Verifying signature for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi Signature verified successfully for SQLSysClrTypes_amd64_enu.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x86.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe: Verifying signature for SetupUtility.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\SetupUtility.exe Signature verified successfully for SetupUtility.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.cab c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi: Verifying signature for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi Signature verified successfully for vcruntime\Vc_runtime_x64.msi c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe: Verifying signature for NDP40-KB2468871.exe c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\NDP40-KB2468871.exe Signature verified successfully for NDP40-KB2468871.exe Action complete Action: Performing actions on all Items Entering Function: BaseMspInstallerT >::PerformAction Action: Performing Install on MSP: c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp targetting Product: Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly 'Microsoft.TeamFoundation.WebAccess.WorkItemTracking,version="10.0.0.0",publicKeyToken="b03f5f7f11d50a3a",processorArchitecture="MSIL",fileVersion="10.0.40219.1",culture="neutral"'. Please refer to Help and Support for more information. HRESULT: 0x80070005. ] Returning IDOK. INSTALLMESSAGE_ERROR [Error 1712.One or more of the files required to restore your computer to its previous state could not be found. Restoration will not be possible.] Patch (c:\757fe6efe9f065130d4838081911\VS10-KB2182621.msp) Install failed on product (Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010 - ENU). Msi Log: MSI returned 0x643 Entering Function: MspInstallerT >::Rollback Action Rollback changes PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643 PerformMsiOperation returned 0x643 OnFailureBehavior for this item is to Rollback. Action complete Final Result: Installation failed with error code: (0x80070643), "Fatal error during installation. " (Elapsed time: 0 00:14:09). Figure: Error log for Team Foundation Server 2010 install shows a failure As there is really no information in this log as to why the installation failed so I checked the event log on that box. Figure: There are hundreds of errors and it actually looks like there are more problems than a failed Service Pack I am going to just run it again and see if it was because the netbook was slow to catch on to the update. Hears hoping, but even if it fails, I would question the installation of Windows (PDC laptop original install) before I question the Service Pack Figure: Second run through was successful I don’t know if the laptop was just slow, or what… Did you get this error? If you did I will push this to the product team as a problem, but unless more people have this sort of error, I will just look to write this off as a corrupted install of Windows and reinstall.

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  • Entity Framework 4.0: Creating objects of correct type when using lazy loading

    - by DigiMortal
    In my posting about Entity Framework 4.0 and POCOs I introduced lazy loading in EF applications. EF uses proxy classes for lazy loading and this means we have new types in that come and go dynamically in runtime. We don’t have these types available when we write code but we cannot forget that EF may expect us to use dynamically generated types. In this posting I will give you simple hint how to use correct types in your code. The background of lazy loading and proxy classes As a first thing I will explain you in short what is proxy class. Business classes when designed correctly have no knowledge about their birth and death – they don’t know how they are created and they don’t know how their data is persisted. This is the responsibility of object runtime. When we use lazy loading we need a little bit different classes that know how to load data for properties when code accesses the property first time. As we cannot add this functionality to our business classes (they may be stored through more than one data access technology or by more than one Data Access Layer (DAL)) we create proxy classes that extend our business classes. If we have class called Product and product has lazy loaded property called Customer then we need proxy class, let’s say ProductProxy, that has same public signature as Product so we can use it INSTEAD OF product in our code. ProductProxy overrides Customer property. If customer is not asked then customer is null. But if we ask for Customer property then overridden property of ProductProxy loads it from database. This is how lazy loading works. Problem – two types for same thing As lazy loading may introduce dynamically generated proxy types we don’t know in our application code which type is returned. We cannot be sure that we have Product not ProductProxy returned. This leads us to the following question: how can we create Product of correct type if we don’t know the correct type? In EF solution is simple. Solution – use factory methods If you are using repositories and you are not using factories (imho it is pretty pointless with mapper) you can add factory methods to your EF based repositories. Take a look at this class. public class Event {     public int ID { get; set; }     public string Title { get; set; }     public string Location { get; set; }     public virtual Party Organizer { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; } } We have virtual member called Organizer. This property is virtual because we want to use lazy loading on this class so Organizer is loaded only when we ask it. EF provides us with method called CreateObject<T>(). CreateObject<T>() is member of ObjectContext class and it creates the object based on given type. In runtime proxy type for Event is created for us automatically and when we call CreateObject<T>() for Event it returns as object of Event proxy type. The factory method for events repository is as follows. public Event CreateEvent() {     var evt = _context.CreateObject<Event>();     return evt; } And we are done. Instead of creating factory classes we created factory methods that guarantee that created objects are of correct type. Conclusion Although lazy loading introduces some new objects we cannot use at design time because they live only in runtime we can write code without worrying about exact implementation type of object. This holds true until we have clean code and we don’t make any decisions based on object type. EF4.0 provides us with very simple factory method that create and return objects of correct type. All we had to do was adding factory methods to our repositories.

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  • Multitask Like a Pro with AquaSnap

    - by Matthew Guay
    Are you tired of shuffling back and forth between windows?  Here’s a handy app that can help you keep all of your windows organized and accessible. AquaSnap is a great free utility that helps you use multiple windows at the same time easily and efficiently.  One of Windows 7’s greatest new features is Aero Snap, which lets you easily view windows side by side by simply dragging windows to side of your screen.  After using Windows 7 for the past year, Aero Snap is one of the features we really miss when using older versions of Windows. With AquaSnap, you now have all of the features of Aero Snap and more in Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and of course Windows 7.  Not only does it give you Aero Snap features, but AquaSnap also gives you more control over your windows to make you more productive. Getting Started AquaSnap is a a free download for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and 7.  Download the small installer (link below) and install it with the default settings. AquaSnap automatically runs as soon as it is installed, and you will notice a new icon in your system tray. Now you can go ahead and put it to use.  Drag a window to any edge or corner of your desktop, and you will see an icon showing what part of the screen the window will cover. Dragging it to the side of the screen expanded the window to fill the right half of the screen, just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7.  You can drag the window away to restore it to its former size. AquaSnap works on any corner of the screen too, so you can have 4 windows side-by-side.  We already have 3 windows snapped to the corners, and notice that we’re dragging a fourth window to the bottom right corner. You can also snap windows to the bottom and top of the screen.  Here we have Word snapped to the bottom half of the screen, and we’re dragging Chrome to the top. You can even snap internal windows in Multiple Document Interface (MDI) programs such as Excel.  Here we are snapping a workbook in Excel to the left to view 2 workbooks side-by-side.   Additionally, AquaSnap lets you keep any window always on top.  Simply shake any window, and it will turn semi-transparent and stay on top of all other windows.  Notice the transparent calculator here on top of Excel. All of AquaSnap’s features work great in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista too.  Here we are snapping IE6 to the left of the screen in XP. Here are 3 windows snapped to the sides in XP.  You can mix the snap modes, and have, for instance, two windows on the right side and one window on the left.  This is a great way to maximize productivity if you need more space in one of the windows. Even AquaShake works to keep a window transparent and on top in XP. Settings AquaSnap has a detailed settings dialog where you can tweak it to work exactly like you want.  Simply right-click on its icon in the taskbar, and select Settings. From the first screen, you can choose if you want AquaSnap to start with Windows, and if you want it to show an icon in the system tray.  If you turn off the system tray icon, you can access the AquaSnap settings from Start > All Programs > AquaSnap > Configuration (or simply search for Configuration in Vista or Windows 7). The second tab in settings lets you choose what you want each snapping region to do.  You can also choose two other presets, including AeroSnap (which works just like the default Aero Snap in Windows 7) and AquaSnap simple (which only snaps at the edges of the screen, not the corners). The third tab lets you increase or decrease the opacity of pinned windows when using AquaShake, and also lets you increase or decrease the shaking sensitivity.  Additionally, if you prefer the standard AeroShake functionality, which minimizes all other open windows when you shake a window, you can choose that too. The fourth tab lets you activate an optional feature, AquaGlass.  If you activate this, it will make windows turn transparent when you drag them across the screen.   Finally, the last tab lets you change the color and opacity of the preview rectangle, or simply turn it off. Or, if you want to temporarily turn AquaSnap off, simply right-click on its icon and select Off.  In Windows 7, turning off AquaSnap will restore your standard Windows Aero Snap functionality, and in other version of Windows it will stop letting you snap windows at all.  You can then repeat the steps and select On when you want to use AquaSnap again. Conclusion AquaSnap is a handy tool to make you more productive at your computer.  With a wide variety of useful features, there’s something here for everyone.  Download AquaSnap Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips How to Get Virtual Desktops on Windows XP TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Out of band Security Update for Internet Explorer 7 Cool Looking Screensavers for Windows SyncToy syncs Files and Folders across Computers on a Network (or partitions on the same drive) If it were only this easy Classic Cinema Online offers 100’s of OnDemand Movies OutSync will Sync Photos of your Friends on Facebook and Outlook

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  • New Article: SharePoint 2010 for Developers &ndash; Whats new?

    - by Sahil Malik
    SharePoint 2010 Training: more information This is an nice overview/beginners article about what is new in SharePoint 2010 from purely a developer point of view. Excerpt - “In some ways SharePoint 2007 was a brand new incarnation of the SharePoint product. For the very first time, ASP.NET 2.0 was applied properly to the product. Things such as master pages, membership providers, sitemap providers etc. were used heavily in SharePoint. As a result, SharePoint 2007 got a whole new developer story to it. But in some ways it was a first version of a big product, so the development story left us wanting for more. Wanting for more because in some ways the API wasn’t ideal, and most certainly the development tools were somewhere between non-existent to bad. Diagnosing SharePoint errors was another frustrating story many have endured. What has changed in SharePoint 2010? Let’s find out.” Read full article ....

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  • 301 rewrite loop with a lowercase URL rule and a URL slug rule [on hold]

    - by anyvendetta
    I need to do a 301 rewrite to force all urls to become lowercase. I put in .htaccess (RewriteMap lc int:tolower in httpd.conf): RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} [A-Z] RewriteRule . ${lc:{REQUEST_URI}} [R=301,L] Everything works just fine except to urls with subcategories which in this case are: /category-1256-Product-page-example.html The numer 1256 refers to a “subcategory”. So when i try to access /category-1256-Product-page-example.html gives me a loop error message. I think another redirect rules are making the loop but dunno how to fix it because are just this urls rewrite rules that don't work with the above rewrite. Rewriterule ^main-site-url/category-([0-9]*)-([-_a-zA-Z0-9]*)\.html$ /subcategories.php?idcategory_main=1&idcategory=$1&category=$2 [L] Rewriterule ^main-site-url/([0-9]*)-([-_a-zA-Z0-9]*)-([0-9]*)\.html$ /file.php?idcategory_main=1&idsubcategory=$1&product=$2&idproduct=$3 [L]

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  • Scrum for a single programmer?

    - by Rob Perkins
    I'm billed as the "Windows Expert" in my very small company, which consists of myself, a mechanical engineer working in a sales and training role, and the company's president, working in a design, development, and support role. My role is equally as general, but primarily I design and implement whatever programming on our product needs to get done in order for our stuff to run on whichever versions of Windows are current. I just finished watching a high-level overview of the Scrum paradigm, given in a webcast. My question is: Is it worth my time to learn more about this approach to product development, given that my development work items are usually given at a very high level, such as "internationalize and localize the product". If it is, how would you suggest adapting Scrum for the use of just one programmer? What tools, cloud-based or otherwise, would be useful to that end? If it is not, what approach would you suggest for a single programmer to organize his efforts from day to day? (Perhaps the question reduces to that simple question.)

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  • Silverlight TV 16: Tim Heuer and Jesse Liberty Talk about Silverlight 4 RC at MIX 10

      While at MIX10, John catches up with Jesse Liberty and Tim Heuer to discuss their favorite features in Silverlight 4 on this episode of Silverlight TV. Along with calling out and discussing why they're each impressed with their favorite features, Jesse, Tim, and John also discuss the impact of the announcements made at MIX regarding development for WP7 and Silverlight at the Day 1 keynote. You can also check out the 60+ page whitepaper that covers the full feature list of all the new features...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Configuring thouands of related products in Magento?

    - by Anonymous -
    I'm at a stage with a Magento store I'm developing where I've added all the products (all 6000 of them) and now would like to configure related products to up my conversion rate a bit. I was wondering if there was an extension anybody knew of that functions similarly to this one, with the most current version of Magento (Community Edition, 1.6.1). If not, would anyone be able to provide some pointers for writing a script that will run through each product and add 1-5 related products. I have a fairly basic idea of taking product title text and just doing a simple text similarity query between other product titles for now, just to get some related products up there, but the Magento database isn't making a terribly large amount of sense. Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this. :)

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